


Marrying the Hangman

by aelibia



Category: Top Gun (1986)
Genre: Alpha Iceman, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Angst with a Happy Ending, Author Horny for Comments, Because Omegaverse is About Gender Let's Be Real, Canonical Character Death, Depression, Discussion of sexual assault, Falling In Love, Gender Roles, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Marriage of Convenience, Medical Examination, No DADT, No mpreg, Non-Traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Omega Maverick, Omega Verse, Omegaverse Microaggressions, Oral Sex, Pining, Protectiveness, Sexual Tension, Slut Shaming, Suicidal Thoughts, Tags Contain Spoilers, Take My Breath Away Playing in Background of All Scenes, We All Know It's Goose, We are Braising Maverick at 275 Degrees for Three Hours, Yes Slick, no knotting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-21
Updated: 2021-03-17
Packaged: 2021-03-18 21:53:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 37,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29615952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aelibia/pseuds/aelibia
Summary: For much of Maverick's life, he's managed to fly his omega status under the radar—sort of. Illegal heat blockers keep the Navy off his ass, and his best friend Goose keeps off everyone else. But when a tragic accident strips Maverick of protection and uncovers his identity, the world he thought he knew casts him from the frying pan into a life of systematic oppression...and Thomas "Iceman" Kazansky's lap. Maybe the fire would have been better.To my dear subscribers: enjoy your assigned reading. There will be a book report.
Relationships: Nick "Goose" Bradshaw & Pete "Maverick" Mitchell, Pete "Maverick" Mitchell & Original Male Character, Rick "Jester" Heatherly/Original Male Character, Tom "Iceman" Kazansky/Pete "Maverick" Mitchell
Comments: 77
Kudos: 35





	1. This is not fantasy, it is history

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Binxxx](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Binxxx/gifts), [thecarlysutra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecarlysutra/gifts).

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter Pete Mitchell does not acquire healthy lifestyle advice

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I threatened my subscribers with this and now here it is. I wrote a 125k omegaverse IceMav in like four-point-five weeks. Not even god can kill me.
> 
> Notes: this is an altered Omegaverse in which there is no mpreg or knotting. There IS smut (a lot??) but it doesn't follow the typical kink patterns that your standard Omegaverse does. This is a story in which I am taking the Omegaverse trope and poking it with a stick until gender & sexuality politics fall out. We do have slick in stock, though. No need to check in the back. It is out here on the shelves in great quantity.

Pete Mitchell’s first memory was of a dimly-lit office in a country far away. His parents had taken him there to see a special doctor who knew about cases like his, and who could provide prescription drugs under the table, no questions asked. 

Beyond the indistinct faces and the smell of sunshine on heat-baked earth, he didn’t remember anything else. He _did_ remember taking the pills for the first time, later. How could he forget? His world had been a riot of smells, sounds, and colors, and taking that first pill had been the hand slamming the door shut. Everything was muted now, soft like a melon going bad. The world expired, limp and colorless, in his arms. _Normal,_ his father had said. _This is how it feels to be normal._

_Normal is safe._

But then Pete’s father got killed when he was six, and his mother died shortly after. After that, all his childhood memories were rooted in his grandmother’s house. She was the one who, after he turned ten, sat him down at the table right before breakfast and changed his life forever.

“You’re an omega, Peter. A molly.” She did not mince words. Later Pete will reflect on this and be grateful, because crashing into the icy truth eyes open is so much better than groping about in the dark, drowning in the merciless cold.

“I don’t understand, Memaw.” The shock hadn’t set in yet. It was still too ridiculous to believe. Any minute now, Memaw would chortle and tell him she was just kidding. Mostly, Memaw was a serious person, but even she told a joke once in a while. She _had_ to be kidding. Pete stared blankly into the knotted surface of the solid oak table, feeling like a criminal convicted of a crime he hadn’t realized he’d been committing.

He’d learned about male omegas in school; every grade included education on the pheromone hierarchy. Teachers were quick to remind students that “hierarchy” was an archaic term referring to caste systems no longer used in _civilized_ societies. All types were beautiful, they said. All types were needed and wonderful and unique: a tapestry of many individual colors forming a grand, seamless design.

But they were wrong. There was one type that _nobody_ wanted to be. Parents given the awful news would cry and cry, like his parents had cried in the clinic where the air smelled of hot earth.

“I know you don’t understand, Petey. But you’ll have to. I’m going to stick around for as long as I can, but it’s time for you to start learning a little more about what you are. It’ll keep you safe the more you know. You know those pills we get in the mail for you?”

“Yes.” He knew. A pill for every day. Every single morning he woke up, rolled over, took a pill from the box Memaw made him hide in a secret drawer, and swallowed it dry. He’d stopped needing the water by the time he was seven.

“Those are to help you hide,” Memaw reminded him. Normally so affectionate, her eyes had a hard look to them. “You think you’re a beta, and so does everyone else, but that’s because the medicine is tricking them into smelling the wrong thing. It’s not safe for people to know you’re a molly.”

“My teacher said that all the types are equal.”

Memaw gave him a smile that wasn’t a smile. Grown-ups did that sometimes. The smiles meant _you don’t know any better_ and _you’ll change your mind when you’re my age_ and _I walked through the snow uphill both ways to buy my heat blockers, son._

“I know you know better than that,” she said. She handed Pete a book—brand new, an expensive hardcover—and told him to start reading it.

_Male Omegas: a History for Children,_ the title read. It was written by a very serious-looking person with many degrees and two dogs, and they all lived in Utah. 

“You want me to read it now?” As subtly as he knew how, Pete glanced into the living room where the television sat. It was almost time for his favorite show: _Redwood & the Dragon. _

The protagonist was a male alpha (protagonists usually were) who rode around on a dragon helping solve mysteries. The protagonist had a male omega husband who had to stay behind at the castle because he wasn't strong enough to go out much. The omega husband spent a lot of on-screen time forgetting things and crying. It was funny, and always a topic of conversation at the lunch table the day after a new episode aired.

“I want you to get started.” Memaw tapped the cover, reclaiming Pete’s attention. “There’s a lot of information to take in. I was going to wait until you were a little older, but if you’re anything like your father you’ll be shooting up like a weed before I know it. Puberty is going to be...an interesting time for you.”

“I know about puberty.” Pete started flipping through the book, already distracted by the pictures. There was artwork, photographs, and even some cave paintings in the first chapter.

Memaw laid her hand over the text. “Listen to me, Petey,” she said softly. “I know you want to be a pilot like your father was. But if you want that, then you have to understand how to hide. It’s easy now because you’re just a boy living at home with your grandma. But at a company or in the military you’re going to have a lot more eyes on you. Watching you all the time, waiting for you to slip up. You have to learn how to protect yourself from people like that. If the Navy finds out you’re a molly, you won’t get anything more than an office job. If you’re lucky. Most likely you’ll end up in jail.”

“Okay,” Pete said absentmindedly, already enraptured by the book’s contents. An opulent two-page spread in the center photographs depicted an oil painting of a male omega coquettishly draped on a fainting couch. Surrounding him were countless vases of flowers in every hue, form, and function. Memaw tutted at Pete for ignoring her but paired her admonishment with a loving pat on his head. It was only natural for him to be so easily distracted, she said.

* * *

That morning, Pete went to school just like he’d always done before. Only this time, he had a secret. A really, really dangerous secret. During morning meeting he kept sneaking glances at the other kids, wondering if they could tell he was different now. _He_ certainly felt different now. Were there any other kids like him hiding in plain sight? Did they know what they were, or had they been kept in the dark the way he’d been?

In spite of his growing fear, Pete tried to have as normal a day as possible. But now that he knew the truth, all the things he’d done without thinking before came under intense self-scrutiny. He played with his friends at recess like normal, but held back more than he usually did. Maybe he would ruin the game for being too slow. Or he might forget the rules halfway through and do something wrong. Then everyone would get mad at him. It was probably better to sit things out.

Plus, if he did something that got him tattled on to the grown-ups, someone might find out. He wasn’t sure how, but he knew it would happen. Omeganess was something a teacher would surely see. The fact that he hadn’t been caught before did not factor into the equation. Everything was different now. He knew, and therefore other people could, too. 

During reading time, rather than whispering to his neighbors like he usually did, Pete kept his head down and read, though his mind could barely parse the sentences on the page. Thoughts of capture drove him to distraction. Or maybe he was just growing into his type and becoming the cotton-brained molly he knew from _Redwood._ It was inevitable at this point. 

After everyone stowed their books away, the teacher praised Pete for his good behavior. She even gave him a sticker so that everyone else could see how good he’d been. _That_ spooked him more than anything else. Forget being bad—he couldn’t be _too_ good or he’d be noticed, too. And then They would find out _that_ way.

There was no _Redwood_ episode to recap at lunchtime (last night turned out to be a rerun) and so Pete, hoping he wasn’t being too obvious, decided to interview everyone sitting within ear’s reach on the subject of male omegas. Casually. Just as a concept—no specifics.

“I mean, it’s not like they should get treated bad, but they just don’t make sense to be here.” Manuel, one of Pete’s closest friends and a beta, always sat right next to him at the lunch table. Could he smell that Pete was different? Was there something in Pete’s eyes that could give him away to his closest friends? Would Manuel hate him if he knew?

“What you mean ‘be here?’ Like, here at the school or here in the world?” Siobhan, a pretty alpha female in their class, had _lots_ of opinions about all the different pheromonal types. 

“Like here in the world,” Manuel clarified. “I mean, they can’t even get pregnant or have babies. So what’s the point of them going into heat? It’s just, like, dumb,” Manuel poked at his mashed potatoes with a spork.

“I have no idea,” said Siobhan. “But my dads say male omegas are, you know,” she paused to look around for teachers. “Slutty,” she whispered. “All they care about is s-e-x. And they don’t drive good because they’re. Uh. High-strung. That’s what my dads said.”

“What’s that mean?” Sterling, a male alpha sitting on Pete’s other side, leaned over the table. In the process, he crushed some of Pete’s potato chips. Sterling seemed not to notice, or if he did he wasn’t apologizing for it.

“I think it means they’re not smart. They can’t do a lot of jobs. I dunno.” Siobhan shrugged. “Anybody want to trade desserts with me? I got a brownie.”

Pete didn’t finish his lunch. He threw half of it in the trash, endured a scolding from a lunch monitor for wasting food, and then spent the rest of the afternoon coasting.

That afternoon when he got home, Pete gave Memaw a kiss and made a beeline for his room. Crouching down to extract the book out from under his bed, he hauled it on top of the mattress and started to read.

_Male Omegas: a History for Children,_ while incredibly dry, offered a lot of helpful information in terms of how omegas lived. As a history book it didn’t offer much assistance in the self-help department—Pete had been hoping for some sort of how-to list he could reference—but it did provide a window into a world he knew little about outside the boring worksheets he filled out in class.

It became quite clear that a male omega’s lot in life depended deeply on the culture and time period into which they were born. Sometimes they weren’t allowed to be citizens. Sometimes they were considered lucky and were taken care of by extended communities their whole lives. Sometimes they were sent into the foster system once their parents found their type. Sometimes they lived in opulent splendor, cared for excessively by alphas wanting to flaunt their own wealth. Sometimes they led armies.

Another two-page spread from the middle featured a glossy staged photograph from the 1930s in Portugal. Dozens of unsettlingly abstract statues surrounded a molly reclining on a loveseat, both draped in fine fabric. According to the caption, this male omega had been bonded to a famous alpha sculptor. 

To Pete’s disappointment, the book agreed with Manuel’s opinion that male omegas made no sense. Interestingly, though, the book did not share Manuel’s morbid judgement on the subject. Rather, it presented the meaninglessness of male omegas as a positive: the author of the text opined that the “biological uselessness” of a male omega was the very thing other pheromonal types found compelling—only male alphas, generally, because as it turned out most everyone else wanted nothing to do with mollies. Every single one of the male omegas featured in the book had paired off with a male alpha, though the book mentioned that things didn't "have" to be that way. Regardless, throughout the text a male omega's partner—real or hypothetical—was assumed to be male and alpha unless otherwise noted.

But it was clear to see that in spite of their dubious reputations and ofttimes poor social status, _everyone_ considered mollies a hot commodity. In effect, with barely 0.001% of the world’s male population being omega, most cultures considered it a matter of pride for one to successfully maintain a male omega’s sustained interest. If a person could afford to pamper and maintain a male omega—who would be fickle and unable to give their lover any children—it would send a clear message of power to any potential rivals, in business or in love. Mollies were grass lawns: they did nothing but suck up time and money, simply to look nice and make a point.

That didn’t seem very romantic to Pete, so he ignored those bits in favor of the chapter on gifting, which had all the best photos and illustrations. What gifts the alpha chose to bestow, the book said, depended on a lot of variables. But a good alpha would know what their omega wanted without asking for suggestions. The ability to determine the omega’s needs through observation alone was another matter of alpha pride. 

Usually, gifts reflected the omega’s own hobby and tastes. But occasionally alphas presented their mollies with flashier items meant to allude to the alpha’s identity, career, or interests: jewelry, clothing, tattoos, piercings, and the like. 

Sometimes you could even figure out what an alpha did for a living just by looking at the molly: the jewelry smiths were some of the most obvious. Pete wondered how some of those mollies even got around under the weight of all the baubles. A few of them sat on palanquins, but not all. Did the latter ever leave the house? 

Pete pointed out a few of his favorite photos to Memaw at the dinner table. 

“What do you think someone would give me?” He asked, hoping she would say “definitely a motorcycle with cool flames painted on the sides.” When Memaw didn’t respond at all, he looked up to see concern written all over her face.

“Nothing,” she said. Her voice shook with something like fear. “There won’t _be_ an alpha to give you presents. That’s what the pills are for. Being a molly isn’t a good life for males, Petey. The females are treated all right, of course—they’re a little stupid but sweet—but with them there’s the payout of children. They have something to give back in exchange for all the trouble they cause. You won’t be able to give an alpha anything but your—well. You’ll learn about that when you’re older.”

That wasn’t fair. That wasn’t fair at _all._ “Why not? Can’t they love me just because?”

“Of course they can, honey.” Memaw took his hand, her papery skin enveloping his fingers like a warm blanket. “But that’s just...not how it is, most times. People don’t trust mollies. Everyone thinks mollies’ll sleep around on them because of their heats. The average alpha isn’t going to treat you good. That’s what those pictures don’t show. You’ll be no better than somebody’s pet. And in this country you can’t even get married to anyone. The best you’d do is a bonding contract that the alpha can break at any time. A beta might be good to you. Not likely. But maybe. It’s just not worth the risk of them finding out. And they _will_ find out. Some things you can’t hide.”

So that was it? Just like that? A fate preordained from the moment of his conception? Surely there was _something._ “What about another molly? Could we be together, if there were two of us?”

“Oh, hon.” Memaw pet the side of his face. “That never happens. Even if it was allowed it wouldn’t happen. Eat your cornbread.”

That night, before Pete went to sleep, he read more of the book under the covers with a flashlight. He stared longingly at the images of male omegas enjoying every comfort life had to offer. Even if what he saw wasn’t the full picture, people wouldn’t provide all of those things for nothing more than vanity, would they? There _had_ to be more to the story.

Surely there was someone out there, somewhere, who would want to give him wonderful things just because. He fell asleep dreaming of a handsome alpha who would punch somebody’s lights out just for the chance to be with him, to protect him from all harm. But mostly, Pete dreamed of being loved.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> People who follow me for my other fandoms are used to me being feral in the author's notes, because I Will Not Stop. One thing I do is offer prompts for people who want to comment but don't know what to say. They are an option for people like me whose brains are very tired and cannot come up with anything to say despite enjoying the reading. So these are not "required" in any way; you don't have to use one or all or any of them. Please do not let me stop you from your normal commenting groove. I just really like hearing from people and want to facilitate that for those who are shy or brain tired. I'm not going to do any for this chapter since it's the first one. Go absolutely buck wild.
> 
> My inspiration for writing this came entirely from this set of annotated gifs I used to comment on another Top Gun fanfiction. My brain would not let me rest until I had Written the Thing. These sacred gifs represent the themes and general vibe of this entire story.
> 
> Ice, out for a walk with Mav, encounters an Object on the sidewalk which he suspects may cause Mav to trip and harm himself:   
> Maverick: 


	2. To live without mirrors

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter Maverick Mitchell does not fuck a Navy SEAL

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: this story is finished and the update schedule depends entirely on when my spouse gets around to doing edits. If you would like to send him fan mail or anon hate he can be reached at

A decade and change later, Pete “Maverick” Mitchell was no closer to finding his Forever Alpha—or his Forever Beta for that matter. But he  _ was _ a lot closer to finding trouble. 

In Maverick’s defense, he did  _ try _ to stay out of trouble. He followed the rules (sometimes), toed the line (dubious), and took his pills religiously (that one was true). Either way, he told Goose, the important bit wasn’t keeping the trouble from happening in the first place. 

The  _ important _ bit was how to get  _ out _ of trouble. In Maverick’s mind, any attempt to stay out of trouble, no matter how flimsy, exonerated him of all subsequent crimes. So really, there was no purpose in trying  _ too _ hard not to get in trouble. In fact, it was more accurate to say that trouble had a way of finding  _ him. _ Maverick was simply...a trouble magnet. He’d probably been born that way. Nothing to be done about it, really.

“Right.” Goose rolled his eyes. “Because the last time you buzzed the tower, it was due to the jet achieving sentience, upon which time it took over the controls and buzzed the tower all on its own. That’s exactly the way I remember it too, Mav. Crazy how that didn’t become international news.”

“Aww, Goose.” Maverick flopped over sideways onto the couch cushions. “You worry too much. What’s the worst thing that could happen?”

It was midnight at Naval Air Station Miramar, and in a mere several hours Maverick was going to wake up, put on his service khakis, and spend the next five weeks competing (and learning—don’t forget the learning) with the best fighter pilots the Navy had to offer. 

“The worst—? You’re seriously asking me that question.” Goose raised his eyebrows at Maverick, who nodded. “Oh, god.  _ He’s serious.” _ Goose picked up an imaginary telephone handset. “Sir, the defense department regrets to inform you that your son is dead because he couldn’t stop himself from humping an alpha’s leg in a bar. Another tragic victim of normalcy bias.” Goose hung up the imaginary phone.

Maverick snorted. “Who are you talking to, man?”

“The ghost of my sanity that you killed long ago, Mav. He’s dead now. I hope you’re happy. And now you’re trying to kill  _ me _ and finish the job.” 

But Maverick, in spite of Goose’s accusation of murder, could barely hold in his glee. A mere smidgen of decorum stood between him and the impulse to roll around in the yard like an overexcited labrador retriever. He was here.  _ They _ were here. They were  _ here. _ TOPGUN. And out of all naval aviators who’d been sent to Miramar, only one would be named Top Gun. 

For the record, it  _ wasn’t _ going to be Maverick. Goose had already decided this ahead of time. In fact, he’d walked a couple doors down to Maverick’s base housing to remind him, kindly yet firmly, of his destiny. Goose was still in his uniform, too. Maverick had long since dressed down to sweatpants and an old t-shirt, reclining casually on the couch in stark opposition to Goose’s frazzled distress.

“You got your drug test back and it’s negative? All clear?” Goose paced Maverick’s living room, cutting tight little circles around the cheap pine coffee table.

Maverick grinned despite Goose’s anxious display. Honestly, the man would worry himself to death one of these days.

“All clear, Mother Goose.  _ And _ before you ask,  _ yes _ I got the extra pills in case something happens. Whatever you think ‘something’ is. I just really hope you’re going to sugar daddy me while we’re here, though. My guy charged an arm, leg,  _ and _ a blowjob for the surplus. They better feed me on weekends or it’s pancakes only. With the fake syrup. And margarine.”

Goose ran a hand through his hair. Beads of sweat dappled his face, reflecting the lights from the streetlamps lining the street outside.

“Okay, Mav. One more time,” he said. He held both hands out to Maverick as though directing a choir. 

Maverick rolled his eyes. Affectionately. “Goose, nothing’s gonna happen. And we went over this at  _ least _ fifty times before we got here. I have you and Carole’s list memorized word for word.” 

Goose put his hands on his hips, giving Maverick the best Dad Face he could muster. It was impressive, Maverick had to admit. It made him want to clean his room immediately and say his prayers. 

“Yeah, right,” Goose shot back. “The day you clean your room without the threat of inspection is the day pigs fly.”

“I mean, pigs flying could happen at any time, Goose. Who knows what’s going on in some secret government lab somewhere. What kind of pigs were you thinking, anyway? There’s lots of kinds. I saw this documentary—”

“You are not going to derail me with farm animal documentaries, Mav. Not now. This is too important.”

“God, you are  _ killing _ me with this shit. Why are you so tense? Breathe.”

“I didn’t earn this callsign due to my appreciation of waterfowl, Mav. Look at me. One more time. One more time and then I’ll go home and we can sleep and have an amazing five weeks in which we do better than average but  _ not _ in an attention-gathering fashion.” 

He sat on the couch next to Maverick, slinging an arm around his shoulders. Maverick could smell a little liquor on Goose’s breath. Was he really stressing out this much? 

“Fine. You win. Roll tape.” 

Goose nodded approvingly. “Why are we here, Mav?” 

Maverick sat up ramrod straight, staring across the room at the wall in an appropriately respectful manner. “To attend the United States Navy Fighter Weapons School in order to learn fighter and aerial strike tactics,  _ sir.” _

“Yes. Yes, good.” Goose looked two seconds and another drink from patting Maverick on the head like a dog. “And how are we going to behave for the duration?” 

“We will be a good boy and fly our bestish and not draw attention to ourselves,  _ sir.” _

Goose closed his eyes in rapturous bliss in the face of Maverick’s cooperation, however obstinate. “Perfect. Amazing. But Mav...there will be alphas everywhere. Instructing us. Flying with us. Are we going to rub ourselves all over them like a cat? Initiate casual sexual encounters? Flash our ankles suggestively?” 

Maverick sighed. “No, sir. We will refrain from slutty behavior,  _ sir.” _

Goose held up a shaky finger. “But what if one of them rubs all over  _ us? _ How do  _ we _ respond?” 

“We will make an excuse and bug out. Even if it means everyone thinks we are an antisocial dickhead,  _ sir.” _

“Okay. Okay. We can do this. No big deal.” Goose took Maverick gently by the shoulders. “Mav? Mav, look at me. Mav, do  _ not _ buzz any towers to get some big dumb asshole’s attention. We do  _ not _ need a repeat of the Navy SEAL situation.”

“No we do not.” Maverick gently took Goose’s hands and held them in his lap. “Happy now?”

“Happi _ er. _ Okay, yeah. It’s gonna be great. Have a wonderful night’s sleep, Mav. You have now earned it.”

“What if I unearn it by climbing through the bedroom window of whatever big dumb asshole got stuck next door to me? Maybe I want a magical night of anonymous sex.”

Goose froze for just a moment before mustering a half-hearted glare. It was much less effective than the Dad Face. “Do  _ not _ even joke about that. I will move my crap into this living room and sleep on your couch.”

Maverick snorted. “Okay, okay. Goodnight, mother.”

“Goodnight, Mav. Get some sleep. I mean it.”

“I know you do.”

* * *

It was a little funny how Goose found out about it.

Well, it wasn’t funny  _ then. _ Then, Maverick had felt locked in place, every muscle in his body fighting his brain’s order to  _ run, run and hide, don’t let them find you _ when he saw Goose’s face in the bathroom mirror. 

Stupid. It had been absolutely stupid to let his guard down the way he had. He thought he’d been careful. Sure, the other guys had seen him popping pills but no one had  _ asked _ about them. People didn’t do things like that. They minded their own business. Plenty of people carried meds with them.

But Goose...Goose had found the receipt. It was a little handwritten scrap, the real old-fashioned shit you only ever found in ancient antique malls run by the same person who’d opened up the place 70 years ago. 

From there, Goose had to do a little sniffing around: Maverick’s supplier wasn’t a complete idiot; it didn’t say “So this right here is the receipt for illegal heat blockers, see?” But as he told it later, Goose had seen the “H-BL” in the corner, noted the country of origin, considered some of Maverick’s past behavior, watched Maverick closely for the next few days, and eventually put two and two together. 

Maverick had thought it was all over. His career, his life, everything. Goose wasn’t his first RIO, or even his second. Ever since he’d completed training for the F-14, Maverick had been through a string of RIOs, all of whom had requested a transfer after flying with him for more than two sorties. Inevitably, Maverick’s unpredictability wore them all down. All his former RIOs had the same story: “I thought he was cool, and then he [insert dumbass risky behavior here] out of nowhere, man.” 

But Maverick couldn’t help it. He was wound up, and it had to come out somehow. For years he’d desperately attempted to hide his status by keeping his nose clean, by suppressing his excitable nature down and away where it wouldn’t attract notice. 

_ Follow the rules. Do your best, but not your  _ best  _ best. No showing off. Nothing risky—what if you end up in the hospital and they find you out? Don’t trust anyone. Don’t confide. _

Living like that had consequences. With no regular way to relieve itself, Maverick’s energy wound up and up into a coil poised to lash out at the first opportunity. As a result, the trouble he got himself into tended to be explosive and at times bordered on harmful, to himself and to others. He’d been called dangerous more than a few times, and disciplined a few more times than that. At least he got a cool callsign out of it (Maverick thought so, anyway). 

But by far, the worst part was knowing that he’d eventually end up doing something stupid again. Under his skin he could feel the impulse to go wild: like a parasite it fed off of his resolve until he could no longer resist its call. If Memaw were alive to see him now, she’d certainly give him a good, long lecture.

Goose, after he’d found out about Maverick, was the one giving him lectures now. While there were less cookies and kisses at the end of Goose’s lectures, Maverick knew they were no less heartfelt. Sometimes Goose made Maverick feel like a helpless little kid, but Maverick knew it was out of affection and a genuine desire to see Maverick safe, happy, and free.

Shit, who else would square up with a horny SEAL if not someone who loved Maverick completely and unconditionally? That had been how Goose had earned  _ his _ callsign. A week after finding out about the pills, Goose had practically gone mute. Maverick went through the motions in a constant state of fear; his fate was in the hands of this man he’d literally just met who’d probably started to hate him even without the juicy gossip he’d just been handed on a silver plate. 

And Goose—he’d just been “Bradshaw” to Maverick at the time—had done nothing with what he’d found out. Less than nothing. He barely spoke to Maverick over the next several days, speaking only when required to and refusing to engage Maverick in any conversation not strictly work-related. 

It was agonizing. Any minute, Maverick thought, and he’d tell somebody. Probably would get rewarded for it, too. Promoted or given a bonus or extra shore leave or hookers or some shit.

And then the Navy SEAL incident happened.

They’d show up on a ship occasionally, hitching rides from here to who knew where in the pursuit of sweaty, testosterone-fueled adventures. Adventures with guns. And big, muscly arms to hold said guns. 

So okay, Maverick had  _ technically _ made the first move. He was stressed out of his mind and not thinking clearly. And staring lustfully at a man’s arms was definitely a first move—at least, in the Navy it was: you stared someone down with that certain Look, they stared back if they were interested, the both of you went to their room or yours, and then sex happened. As long as you were off the clock, nobody gave a shit.

And the SEAL, accepting Maverick's special Look, had made his way over—wearing only a towel, Jesus Christ oh god—to get a look at what Maverick had to offer—and promptly ran into Nicholas Bradshaw, equal in height and  _ very _ unequal in muscle mass.

“Don’t even fucking try it,” Goose had said.

The SEAL gave Goose a sardonic once over, smiled—not unkindly—shrugged, and then walked off. Some people didn’t have anything to prove to anyone.

“Damn,” said some other guy in a towel.

By the end of the hour, everybody on the ship knew and the infamous Mother Goose had earned his rightful title.

Maverick, truthfully, hadn’t known what to make of it. Was Bradshaw staking some sort of claim to his body in order to blackmail him more effectively? How many blowjobs would it take Maverick to pay off his debt? Would that be enough, or would there also be money involved? Maverick, in a daze, let Bradshaw lead him back to their room without the slightest bit of struggle, resigned to whatever awaited him.

And then Bradshaw had shut the door, shoved a blanket into the crack, and turned to Maverick with a face white like a sheet.

“Are you  _ stupid?” _ He’d hissed. “That is a genuine, non-rhetorical question.  _ Are _ you stupid? Because that out there, that was some  _ advanced _ stupid.”

And Maverick, subconsciously out to prove Bradshaw correct, could only manage, “Huh?”

Bradshaw clapped both hands to the side of his own face. “Unbelievable. What if he found out, you dumbass? You think he’s gonna stay quiet? If he didn’t narc immediately he’d probably ensnare you in some sick little sexual arrangement as payment for keeping your secret.”

“What? Huh?”

“You’re an—” Bradshaw glanced nervously at the door and lowered his voice. “An  _ omega. _ That’s what the pills are for, right? You can’t be going around seducing special forces all willy nilly. That’s just  _ asking _ for trouble. I say again: are you  _ stupid, _ Mitchell?”

Bradshaw...wasn’t going to turn him in? Bradshaw was...worried? About  _ him? _ Maverick’s eyes grew wide. He stared at Bradshaw, both of them still only in towels. It would have been a funny picture if they both hadn’t been so lost in their respective dramatic fantasies.

“You’re...not going to say anything?” Maverick clung to his towel to keep from wringing his hands together. “I thought—you were so quiet this week, I thought you were...you know, mad at me. Or grossed out. Or something.”

Bradshaw lowered his gaze to the floor. He held out a hand as though to grab Maverick’s shoulder, hesitated, and then dropped it. “Look, I know that probably freaked you out. I was thinking, all right? I didn’t know what I should do about it. I thought about turning you in, but you just—you were so nice to me, I couldn’t...it’s not fair, Mitchell. It’s not your fault what you are.”

Maverick stared at Bradshaw for the longest thirty seconds of his life. “What are you going to do?”

When Bradshaw picked up his head again, there was a powerful look in his eyes, hard like flint but directed away from Maverick, pointed into the shadows that chased Maverick everywhere he went.

“I’m going to look out for you, Maverick,” Goose said. “I’ll make sure you don’t get found out. Count on it.”

* * *

And he  _ had _ looked out for Maverick. Tremendously. Some might say  _ too _ tremendously.

He became so protective of Maverick that everyone assumed they were sleeping together, even. It made sense. Maverick, according to everyone’s noses, was a beta, and a cute one at that. And Goose was an alpha who, yeah, had an omega at home, but lots of guys did things like this. You kept your girl or whatever at home and your boyfriend or whatever at sea.

But after more than a few nights of nosey ears pressed to the door to their bunk, people had to call it a day on the rumors. They came to accept the fact that Nicholas Bradshaw, for unfathomable reasons, did not want anybody else fucking his pilot, including himself. Ever. No friendly ass slaps, either. Manly back slaps were okay but on thin fucking ice. 

People chalked it up to some weird alpha male bullshit posturing and went about their lives. There were other people to fuck, after all. It wasn’t as though Mitchell was the only piece of ass around.

Goose took his self-appointed duty as Maverick’s guardian angel very seriously. On one  _ very _ memorable shore leave, Maverick ran out of pills. The next drop-off was coming—deliveries traveled from country to country and were handed off in person at an agreed-upon location—but it was late. 

Hold-ups at the border, they’d said in response to Maverick’s frantic pay-phone call— _ god _ had that been an expensive phone call—and no, they weren’t exactly sure when the hold-up would end. The guy they’d been bribing was gone and they hadn’t yet set up a new arrangement and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, suck it, molly.

Maverick told Goose about it. Or more accurately, he broke down in Goose’s direction about it. The pills were dailies and while you wouldn’t start gushing slick all over the place the day after you stopped, it was only a matter of time before you’d start to smell...different.

And Goose had looked into Maverick’s eyes, seen the terror living there—terror Maverick could only set aside and never exterminate—and said, “Don’t worry, Mav. I’ve got a plan.”

The plan involved renting an isolated beach house on the little island where they’d disembarked. Strictly speaking, the isolated beach house  _ had _ been meant for Carole, who’d flown halfway across the world to enjoy a once-in-a-lifetime tropical vacation with her husband. The beach house was  _ not _ intended to be a crash pad for Maverick, who was shaking with dread by the time he and Goose walked in the front door. 

And Carole, Goose’s doting wife and an omega herself, had taken one look at him, understood, and taken control. 

“Oh, honey,” she’d said. “Is this your first real one?”

Maverick had fallen into her arms and burst into tears. It had been a long, long time since anyone besides Goose had shown him compassion and even longer since he’d experienced true empathy. 

That, and Maverick’s fluctuating hormones had finally, at long last, cut through his emotional control wiring. Fifteen years of near-constant dread burst from his body like water from a collapsing dam. 

The heat was awful. Miserable. Carole’s were mild; female omegas didn’t heat quite so hard, and there were legal pharmaceuticals to help manage the heats, provided the omega was married and her alpha or beta signed off on them. But she still knew more about what to expect than Maverick did. 

He’d read and seen things firsthand, but not everyone’s heats hit the same. Maverick’s hit with the force of a dump truck—possibly due to his having been on heat blockers for years, Carole wondered aloud. 

Maverick had been in no state to answer. He’d been face down butt-ass naked on the bathroom tiles at that point, spread eagle in an attempt to slough off even half a degree of the inferno burning through his body. Carole cooed at him while he cried off and on, saying things like “oh, you poor thing” as she draped washcloths on him that she’d dampened and put in the freezer to firm up. 

Heats fucking  _ hurt _ when you had no adequate way to address them. The pornos portrayed male omega heats as voluptuously hedonistic affairs; male omega actors feigning heat on screen exuded a sort of demure arousal that male alphas apparently couldn’t get enough of. He should’ve known better. Hadn’t he been paying a bit of attention at the molly parties? 

Ignorance, it seemed, was contagious—specifically, the ignorance of non-mollies. His shipmates couldn’t shut the fuck up during downtime about male omegas and all the kinky things they wanted to do to one if they were lucky enough to (1) see one in real life and (2) somehow grab its attention.  _ They _ thought heats were about getting horny and invitingly moist.  _ They _ thought heats were about bedroom eyes and ecstatic moans and  _ please, sir, please give me another. _

They would have been shocked to see Maverick now. When he wasn’t crying from the pain, his mind clouded over with a visceral rage that made him want to chew through the drywall, grab the nearest pointy stick, and start beating the shit out of a palm tree—something,  _ anything _ to release some of the madness steamrolling its way through the recesses of his hind brain. 

He wanted to fuck. He wanted to die. He wanted to light the beach house on fire. He wanted to fistfight god. He wanted to kill everyone in the entire world. He wanted to tear off his junk and throw it into the ocean. He wanted to go vertical and break through to the fucking exosphere at Mach 69 just to feel something that wasn’t  _ this.  _

Goose, being happily bonded to his omega and not into Maverick in “that way,” was not driven to horny madness by Maverick’s heat pheromones. But the scent did make him irritable and restless, so he prowled around outside to make sure no one got close enough to catch a whiff and investigate. 

In a moment of lucidity Maverick beheld Goose sitting on the porch contemplating the ocean with a thousand-yard stare. In his hands was a trench knife that Maverick was pretty certain Goose didn’t own. Where had he gotten it?

“He gets real protective of people he cares about,” Carole had whispered. 

He sure fuckin’ did.

And it was probably a fluke. Goose was Maverick’s closest friend by then but he  _ was _ still an alpha. Everyone knew male alphas were pushy, dominant, and self-centered. Some of the male omegas Maverick had met described their experiences with male alphas as torrid affairs bordering on abusive. Male alphas wanted to control. They wanted to command. 

Female alphas could be just as bad, though you’d be hard pressed to find one that would openly have a relationship with a molly; usually alpha females were concerned that people would see them as too masculine if they were with a male omega. They’d rather be with a beta of any sex or an omega female. 

If two cisgender females wanted children and went with artificial insemination, male omega samples would never be considered a viable option—if you could  _ find _ a sperm bank willing to pay for molly spunk. Most people didn’t want male omega genes anywhere near their children.

An alpha female had tried explaining this ideology to Maverick once and he’d lost track of the logic somewhere around sentence three. In the end he chalked it up to alphas being alphas. Alphas were strange, forceful creatures that Maverick would never understand, and he felt at peace with this. Goose and his determined affection were unique among his kind.

Goose, for his part, encouraged Maverick’s fears and agreed that his own protectiveness towards Maverick was indeed a fluke.

“They’re only thinkin’ about one thing, Mav,” Goose told him earnestly. “And it ain’t your health or happiness, I’ll tell you that much.”

“I hope it’s not always like this,” Maverick said. They were back on the ship by that point, heat successfully survived, scent back under control, and pills in hand. “I don’t want to stop flying. I know they won’t let me fly if they find out. But I just wish I didn’t have to hide.” 

_ I want someone to know what I am and give me all their love.  _

_ Romantic love,  _ he added to himself. He knew by then that Goose loved him, but it was firmly in platonic territory: brotherly, sometimes creeping into avuncular. Maverick wanted to be doted upon in a way that made him breathless and flushed. He wanted someone to set his heart aflame. He wanted a love like the kind he saw in those god awful rom coms he voted for “ironically” on movie nights.

“It’s gonna be okay, Mav. One day. Just remember that. One day it’ll be better. You’ll see.”

And he was right. Things  _ had _ gotten better. 

Eventually. Not right away.

Because first, things were about to get  _ so _ much worse. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Maverick: lol what’s the worst that can happen  
> This chapter: [makes several “funny” references to Goose dying]  
> All of you, glancing up at the archive warning as one:  
> 
> 
> You know what's funny is I started doing the comment prompts because I saw so many tumblr posts in the writing/fanfiction/ao3 tags saying they were sad that they couldn't come up with things to say at the end of a chapter and I empathized heavily because Same, but then I saw some posts where people were like "I don't want any author ever to reply to my comment and that's why I don't do it; I want the author to exist as a cloud of nothing, like images of god in certain genres of Christian Sunday School worksheet coloring pages." And I had the funny thought of someone doing a comment and then tumblr-bio-ing it at the end like AUTHOR DNI.
> 
> Anyway:  
> 1\. Where tf did Goose get that knife? Did you give it to him???  
> 2\. Describe the omegaverse-AU version of the first rom com that pops into your head  
> 3\. How is it gonna get worse


	3. Stories, which cannot be believed and which are true

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter Maverick Mitchell does not help Iceman locate that loving feeling

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Goose @ Maverick at all times: 

During class the next day, Maverick attempted to keep his promise to Goose: he was  _ not _ going to do better than the minimum required to pass, and he was  _ not _ going to attract attention. Had he attracted someone’s attention anyway? Well, yes, but for once it hadn’t been his fault! Everything had been going so well up until the last five minutes. 

All morning he’d been following Goose’s lead. He sat in the back of the room like a good boy. When Jester asked the class if they knew the naval aviator with the highest number of kills, Maverick didn’t raise his hand even though he knew the answer. When Viper drew everyone’s focus to the plaque at the back of the room holding the names of previous Top Guns, Maverick averted his eyes when everyone glanced over their shoulders. 

And even though it was hard not to, he refrained from making a smartass comment when some guy named Hollywood announced to the world that his name would be going on there next.

And then, in spite of all his efforts,  _ attention _ happened. After a short presentation from one of the instructors (Jester) and an even shorter presentation from the program lead (Viper), Maverick thought he was home free. His brain, tired of being on a knife’s edge for hours on end, shifted into space cadet mode. Goose didn’t mind when he spaced out, having once told Maverick that apathy made a serviceable big dumb asshole repellent. 

But every system had its failure points, and Maverick’s woolgathering was no exception. If someone was dead set on throwing him ass-first into the spotlight, the only thing he could do was react. It helped to know the other person’s motivation; sometimes he could melt right back into the floor with as little as a one-word agreement. 

Unfortunately, Maverick had spaced out so hard that he hadn’t actually heard what it was that had been said. All he knew was one minute he was staring down at the floor counting specks on the linoleum and the next minute he looked up to find the whole class staring at him. Maverick looked desperately to Goose, who scowled at the RIO sitting with Hollywood.

“Right? You guys are the ones who saw the MiG, right?” the RIO said. A couple other people in the room nodded in agreement. “Everybody was talking about it before we came down here. They said you were in an inverted dive right on top of it. That’s crazy, man.”

Viper, who made no effort to silence the RIO, regarded Maverick coolly.  _ Well? _ he seemed to say. The other students kept staring at Maverick, clearly waiting for him to respond one way or another.

“Oh,” Maverick said, his brain working frantically to come up with a suitable distraction. He could feel his face starting to heat up. “That. Well, you see, it’s funny you mention that, because it really wasn’t that big of a deal…if you were there...so, Cougar was—”

“You’re kidding, right? We all had to go to emergency meetings updating us on the MiG-28’s specs. Because of you.”

Viper had a little smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. Maverick focused on it rather than the RIO who’d spoken, who was probably someone he’d see a lot of. What was he supposed to say? If he agreed, people would notice him more. If he disagreed, they’d hound him for the truth. What to do?

Goose, as usual, saved the day. He whipped out a copy of the polaroid from his service khakis and held it aloft.

“Got the photograph right here, boys. Anybody who wants a look please form an orderly line.” He looked up at the front of the room, where Viper stood waiting. “After class, of course. I apologize for interrupting, sir.”

The corner of Viper’s mouth twitched in an almost-smile. “Thank you, Lieutenant Bradshaw. But incidentally, that happens to be all for today. Everyone is dismissed.” Viper left the room at a languid pace, that little smile of his lingering for a moment in Maverick’s direction.

Afterward, Maverick did his best to blend in with the chair. He was boxed in with the wall on one side, chairs to the front and back, and Goose to his left blocking the looky-loos both with his body and the irresistible seduction of the polaroid. As everyone walked by to take a look and introduce themselves, Maverick kept his eyes trained away, examining the posters to his right with the dedication of a leading poster scholar.

Safe.

Yeah, he could do this.

* * *

“That was  _ perfect, _ Mav. Keep it up. The socially inept moron routine was inspired. So proud of you.”

It was after nightfall. Goose, pleased with the way things had transpired that morning, practically skipped up to the O-Club entrance with Maverick in tow. Both of them were in their summer whites and Goose had even offered to drive Maverick over so that Maverick could drink enough to have fun.

“Now don’t get  _ drunk,” _ Goose had clarified on the drive over. “Tipsy is all we’re shooting for. We can’t let our guard down.”

They were waved in by the bouncer and made their way to a clear spot at the bar. Maverick leaned back against the faux wood trim, relaxing as he took in the room.

“Of course it was perfect, Goose. When am I not perfect?” 

“You’re absolutely right. I should never have doubted you. Now let’s get you something to celebrate getting through day one. Mav, we survived the introductory slideshow! Look at you, buddy.”

“Wow, that bar is  _ very _ low.”

Goose ordered two beers. When Maverick turned to accept his, he did a double take: the bartender was another molly. Maverick hadn’t been able to smell him over all the other pheromones baking in the body heat filling the rest of the room. 

But now Maverick wondered how he’d missed him. Everything about him screamed for attention: he wore a leather jacket that looked pricey, delicate drop earrings shaped like feathers, and a nose ring. On his throat was an intricate watercolor tattoo of an F-4 Phantom II, the fuselage aligned parallel with his jugular. Someone loved him very much.

When he noticed Maverick gawking, the molly looked back imperiously. But then he tilted his head a little and the challenging expression shifted into something more like curiosity. And acknowledgement. Maverick froze. 

“Vinh Heatherly,” the molly said without preamble. “You, call me Vinny.”

“Just me?” Maverick tried for humor. Vinny did not look amused.

“Yes. I go by Mr. Heatherly with the students, usually. Lucky you.”

“Thank you,” Maverick said. He couldn’t think of anything better to say. His whole mind felt like it’d run face-first into a brick wall. Another molly, here? What were the odds of that? Before Maverick could come up with a more intelligent response, Vinny walked down the bar to tend to the next customer.

Goose nudged Maverick in the shoulder, handing over the beer Maverick had plain forgotten about. “Low bar or not, we must take our victories where we can, Comrade Mitchell.”

Maverick shook himself out of his astonishment, laughed with Goose, and held out his beer neck first. “To meeting extremely low expectations.”

Goose clinked the neck of his beer against Maverick’s “To continuing to meet them indefinitely for all foreseeable futures.”

“For  _ all _ foreseeable futures.”

They nursed their drinks for a few minutes, taking the time to people watch and make unflattering comments about the other patrons under their breath. Once he relaxed a bit more, Goose prodded Maverick with his elbow, the look on his face promising mild shenanigans.

“So Mav, you want to know who the best is?”

“The best duo, you mean?” Maverick gestured to himself and Goose. “It’s us, right?”

Goose laughed. “Besides us, obviously. No, the best pilot. He’s over there, see him in the corner? That’s him.” Goose surreptitiously pointed at another in their cohort: a tall man standing off in a corner conversing with a handsy brunette. Maverick stood on his tiptoes, trying to get the best view. And then he promptly forgot how to breathe. 

“Iceman,” Goose continued, ignorant to the supernova popping off in Maverick’s pants. “It’s the way he flies. Ice cold, no mistakes, wears you down. You get—” Goose stopped talking. He looked at Maverick. Then he looked at Iceman. And back to Maverick again. An expression of complete and utter horror slowly moved its way across Goose’s face. 

“Oh Mav, no. Please not this again. Christ. Not with  _ him. _ Peter Maverick Mitchell. Stop looking at—aw, hell Slider’s coming over. Be  _ cool, _ Mav. Shit, scoot behind me. Don’t look at Slider.  _ Don’t _ look at Iceman either.”

An even taller man, also in summer whites, made his way over from the opposite side of the room after removing his sunglasses and tucking them into his shirt. He came to a stop right in front of Maverick, giving him an evaluative look. 

Be cool, Goose said. Maverick could do cool...when he wanted to. Ah, but “cool” was but a misnomer. Being cool was Attention City, Goose told him once. What Goose  _ meant  _ when he told Maverick to be cool was for Maverick to dissolve into the background. So Maverick tried to make his face perfectly blank: no blinking, motionless as a corpse. In retrospect, that was probably weirder than doing literally anything else. 

“Slider,” Goose said boisterously. “The hell are you doing here?” Goose poked Maverick in the back incessantly, trying to get Maverick behind him without being too obvious about it.

But Maverick was now oblivious to Goose’s desperate movements and he did not hear the majority of Goose’s conversation with this Slider gentlemen. In fact, Maverick barely even registered Slider’s presence at all, for Maverick had just locked eyes with the most beautiful human being he’d ever seen in his life.

He would’ve been in class with The Iceman just that morning—how had Maverick missed him? How could he have missed someone so handsome, so perfect? But of course, he’d been focused on laying low. Viper was the only other person he’d sustained eye contact with all morning besides Goose. 

Maverick hadn’t been assessing the competition then. Probably a good thing. Because if he had been looking, Maverick was certain he’d have started professing his undying love right then and there in front of god and everyone. 

“Hey, is your pilot defective? I don’t think someone with this level of situational awareness has the ability to get off the ground, much less play tag with a MiG. Mitchell, you good...? Look, he’s not even paying attention to me.”

“You aren’t an interesting person, Slider,” Goose drawled.

“Fuck you, Bradshaw.”

“Slider, it pains me to reject you in public like this but you’re going to have to wait in a  _ very _ long line first. Mav? Maverick. Buddy. Please.”

“Yeah,  _ Mav. _ Drink your beer like a good boy and listen to your mother.”

Maverick picked up their conversation in bits and pieces, words floating in, over, and around his head like fluff from a cottonwood tree. Goose and Slider were long gone, sunk into a beer-flavored abyss. Maverick’s entire world centered now around  _ him. _ The Iceman. Presented in glorious technicolor. Tall. Blond. So ravishing in white. And making a beeline right for Maverick.

This time, Goose just stepped in front of Maverick, giving up on subtlety entirely. Slider craned his neck around to give Maverick another appraisal, this one significantly more suspicious than his first.

Iceman shook Goose’s proffered hand. “Mother Goose,” he said with an easy smile. God, his voice was perfect, too. “Good to see you.” He shifted a little to catch Maverick’s eye again. “This must be your gosling I’ve heard so much about. I must say, he’s not quite what I expected based on the rumors. I figured someone that notorious would have a personality to match.”

Goose laughed amiably and relaxed, coincidentally resting his hand against the bar in a manner that fenced Maverick in. Anyone wanting to shake Maverick’s hand now would need to possess gymnastic talents.

Iceman looked away from Maverick to Goose again. “You going to introduce me, or are you planning on keeping him all to yourself for the next five weeks?”

At that, Goose stepped aside, conceding his little guarding game for the moment: any further attempts to hiss at approaching strangers would attract too much notice. Maverick could practically feel Goose preemptively going into damage control mode.

“Tom, this is Pete Mitchell,” Goose said, resting a hand on Maverick’s shoulder. “Maverick. Tom Kazansky, Maverick. Iceman.”

_ “Mister _ Iceman,” Slider said.

Iceman stepped forward until he was barely an arm’s length away from Maverick. Close enough for Maverick to get a noseful of his scent. Even with the heat blockers suppressing his senses, he got a general idea, inhaling the scent through his mouth and over the sensory organ at the top; there was a world of information in someone’s smell. 

Iceman smelled sharp like the edge of a sword, crisp like a spring gale after the last frost. He smelled confident, relaxed. If he hadn’t been on blockers he’d have known even more, but it was probably for the best; if Iceman smelled any more incredible Maverick would’ve had no choice but to let Iceman fuck him right then and there.

As it was, Maverick had to catch himself from mashing his face into Iceman’s pecs so he could drown in the sexy musk. It would totally be worth the public humiliation to follow, but he  _ did _ have Goose’s reputation to worry about, too.

“Congratulations on TOPGUN,” Iceman said. To Maverick. He was  _ talking _ to  _ Maverick. _ Maverick looked at Goose, who shrugged helplessly.

But now Maverick had to think of a response to Iceman’s statement. That was how conversations worked. Someone said something to you and then you said something back based on what  _ they _ said, and then they said something  _ else _ based on what  _ you _ said. 

What was one supposed to say in situations like this? How did one engage in normal social interactions when confronted by everything they’d ever wanted in an alpha contained in one glorious, over-six-foot package? God, he could probably pick Maverick up with no trouble at all. Would it be better to be carried like a baby or over the shoulder? It would be best to try both, Maverick reasoned. For the sake of empirical study.

“Thank...you. Thanks. You, too,” Maverick managed. There. That was serviceable and normal. And oh, Iceman had a wonderful smile. It did not bother Maverick one bit that the smile was almost certainly at his own expense. 

“Sorry to hear about Cougar,” Iceman said. The challenge that had been in his eyes before waned a little. “He and I were like brothers in flight school. He was a good man.”

“...Yeah.” Maverick nodded. Everything Iceman said was so smart and good. “The best man. Wonderful...incredible man. So tall. Cougar. Cougar was very tall.”

Goose sat his beer down on the bar so as to cover his face with  _ both _ hands. Slider began snickering openly. And Maverick couldn’t bring himself to care even a little bit. Not with Iceman smiling at him like that, like Maverick was a snack he wanted to devour the way he was devouring those bar nuts. Jesus.

Iceman gave Maverick a slow once-over and Maverick had to fight back the urge to shiver. He was  _ very _ glad he’d taken the extra time to iron his uniform twice, because of course that would let Iceman know how responsible he was and therefore a good catch. Somehow.

“Cougar was there when...when the thing happened,” Maverick said, paying no attention to the words coming out of his mouth. He was far too busy gawking to focus on the inanities of dialogue. “Over the...the ocean. It was the Indian one.”

“Oh, the thing, huh? How about that? You know, I really love things. Can’t get enough of them. Maybe one day I’ll experience a thing firsthand.”

“Oh, wow. That’s—yeah, me too.” 

Distantly, Maverick heard Goose utter lamentations of despair into his palms while Slider burst out laughing so hard he had to lean on a nearby pillar to stay upright. Iceman didn’t laugh, but since Maverick was staring at his lips he saw the corner of Iceman’s mouth twitch. Iceman looked right at him, eyes now half-lidded. They were what the kids these days called “bedroom eyes.”

“Say, you need any help?” And now he wanted to  _ help _ Maverick. What a generous and thoughtful young man. Would wonders ever cease? Coincidentally, Maverick thought he could use some help finding Iceman’s boudoir.

“Help? Help me? Why?” He inched closer. Goose wouldn’t mind, would he? Touching Iceman’s chest to see if he felt as good as he looked wouldn't get him busted. It would just be some good old fashioned clean family friendly physical contact.

Iceman leaned forward until he was just inches away, propping himself up flirtatiously with a hand against the bartop. He was fencing Maverick in just as Goose had, only  _ this _ experience was far more arousing. 

“Have you figured it out yet?”

Maverick  _ did _ have it figured out. He was going to marry Iceman and make him happy every day for the rest of his life. Iceman was going to love him and give him little presents to show that he cared, just like Vinny’s alpha did with him. They would have a golden retriever. Her name would be Maple. They would buy her a little leather jacket to match Maverick’s. They would have an autumn bonding ceremony in Vermont just after the leaves turned.

“Who?”

Iceman looked like he was having the time of his life. For a heart-stopping moment his eyes dropped to Maverick’s mouth.

“Who’s the best pilot?” Iceman’s other hand slowly made its way to the bar too. Now he had Maverick completely pinned.

Maverick chugged the rest of his beer and blindly held a hand out to Vinny, who’d come back over to watch the show. Another beer manifested into Maverick’s hand.

“I already know.”

“Oh yeah?” Iceman tilted his head, expectant. 

“Yeah. It’s you. I know it’s you.”

Goose slid down the bar to the floor, his face still in his hands. “No,” Goose moaned. “Anything but this. Oh god, why?  _ Why?” _

Now it was Iceman’s turn to snort. He didn’t crumple up like Slider had, but he did put a hand near his mouth as though to soften his amusement by concealing a smile.  _ No, _ Maverick thought;  _ do not hide the lips. Please do not put them away. _

“Nice to meet you, Mitchell. I’ll see you in class.” And as swiftly as he’d walked over, he departed. Vanished into the crowd. Like a ghost. Made of ice. Ice ghost man.

Slider pointed an accusatory finger in Maverick’s face. “Keep your dick off of my pilot, Mitchell. Nobody wants your tiny little beta ass.”

Maverick barely heard Slider’s threat: he was fantasizing about following Iceman, inviting him to the nearest supply closet, and licking his naked body from top to tail. It was a pretty graphic fantasy for 7 PM on a Monday, but sometimes that couldn’t be helped.

* * *

The second Slider was gone, Goose took Maverick by the arm and dragged him into the bathroom. They both went into the handicapped stall at the back. Another bar patron, seeing this, rolled his eyes and walked out.

“Maverick, this is our  _ first day,”  _ Goose hissed frantically. “Can you not keep it in your pants for five seconds? I  _ told _ you not to look at him.”

But Maverick still felt lost in a sea of tingles and warm fuzzies. He barely registered Goose’s panic. He barely registered his own existence. “Did you  _ smell _ him, Goose? Have you ever smelled anything so fucking  _ good?” _

“The sweet and spicy odor of Carole's cinnamon rolls far outstrips Thomas “Icebitch” Kazansky’s shifty alpha stank. Jesus, Mav, if I’d have known you’d be this susceptible I would’ve invested in some nose plugs for you. And blinders. Like what horses have. Mav, are you listening to me?”

Maverick smiled up at Goose. “You know what, Goose?”

“Do I know if it’s your bedtime? Yes it is, now let’s—”

“I think Iceman has...lost something.” Maverick barely suppressed a giggle.

“What are you—no.” Goose’s expression fell like a house of cards. He held Maverick gently by the face. “No.”

“I think he’s lost that lov—”

_ “No. _ Absolutely not. He has not lost that or any other thing, ever. No. Bad. We are going home.” He took Maverick by the arm again and gently, firmly escorted him out of the bathroom, back through the lounge to the exit. Back home. Away from Iceman and his beautiful body.

While Maverick was definitely put out to be leaving so early, it was worth it to catch Iceman’s eyes once again on the way out and drink in that confident, knowing glance: not a dismissal, but a promise for something more.  _ If _ he was lucky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It will surprise absolutely no one to learn that living in fearful suspicion 24/7 has a detrimental effect on a person's social IQ. I present to you Omega Maverick: tender of heart and dumb of ass. He never learned how to act and by god he is not learning it now.
> 
> If it were physically possible Goose would hold Maverick's hand while they are in the Tomcat, just to remind Maverick of his unwavering support.
> 
> Iceman's loving feeling is still at large. If you see something, say something.


	4. What was the temptation?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter Maverick Mitchell does not go to Iceman's house (promise)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is dedicated to every fighter pilot who ever drew a sky penis with their contrails

Class began the next day in a makeshift classroom situated in one of the hangars. Maverick and Goose arrived early, staking out spots in the front row this time because Goose figured even Maverick wouldn’t be enough of a dumbass to spend time breaking his neck ogling Iceman in front of god and everybody.

Unfortunately, Goose was correct. Ogling would probably inspire a scolding, which was Attention, which was Bad. And in any case, even though Maverick could feel himself going crazy from the smell—Iceman’s, which he could now pick out from the crowd—there was a new smell grabbing his attention, drifting up through the aisle to the front.

“—and you’ll also be evaluated by civilian specialists. This is Charlie. She has a PhD in astrophysics and works with the Pentagon. Charlie, all yours.” Jester finished his introduction and stepped aside.

Maverick sat up straighter in his chair. Here was an alpha female who did her type credit: confident, no-nonsense, and assertive, she surveyed the room with the exacting demeanor of a queen. She was beautiful, but nothing about her hit Maverick’s horny button; her scent demanded his respect rather than his penile appreciation. After surveying the rest of the class in silence, her sharp eyes snapped to his face. 

“Lieutenant Mitchell,” she said, moving closer as she spoke. Her backlined pantyhose and sensible heels came to a halt right in front of him. Maverick tried to sit up even straighter. “I’ve heard about you. You caused a lot of trouble for some of my colleagues at the Pentagon with your little MiG stunt.”

“Sorry,” Maverick said. He refrained from ducking his head with considerable effort.

Her eyes flicked up and down his body—not an act of seduction but assessment. 

“Yes, I did hear that you prefer not to boast of your accomplishments. Quite the interesting combination, given some of the reports of you I’ve heard. Low passes in restricted airspace? Drawing obscene images in the sky with your contrails? A 4G inverted dive? Someone who pulls off stunts like that doesn’t seem the modest sort. I don’t imagine you earned your callsign by following all the rules, now did you?”

“I—uh, yes.” Avoiding notice couldn’t always involve a physical retreat. Sometimes Maverick could make do with repeated agreement regardless of the topic at hand. Maverick leaned towards Goose, who laid a steadying hand on his shoulder.

“Yes?” Charlie smirked, but there was warmth in it. “That’s it?”

“Maverick here is what you might call a dark horse, ma’am,” Goose chimed in. “There’s really no telling what he’ll do next. And you know, in the heat of aerial conflict—which we have been in—sometimes being unpredictable is the difference between getting blown out of the sky and living to fly another day.” Goose scooched slightly closer to Maverick. Once, he’d jokingly threatened to carry around a flannel sheet when in Maverick’s presence. If Maverick needed to be concealed from view at a moment’s notice, Goose said, then he’d be ready.

“All right, then.” Charlie said, capitulating for the moment. She tilted her head in Maverick’s direction. “Lieutenant Mitchell, I’d appreciate it if you’d stop by my office later. I’d love to hear more about that MiG.”

“Yeah, _Mitchell,”_ Slider heckled from the back. “And then Ice wants you to come to his house after class to look at his etchings.”

Maverick heard the telltale sound of a hand smacking the back of a head. He didn’t need to turn around to confirm whose hand it was.

* * *

Charlie occupied Maverick’s attention for a mere twenty minutes: the length of the break between that day’s class and the first hop. She was again surprised at the famous MiG insulter’s repeated redirections, and told Maverick that even for a male beta he was surprisingly demure.

It made Maverick want to laugh a bit, both at her lack of detecting his ruse and the assumption—which, granted, most people subscribed to—that people reliably conformed to the stereotypes of their pheromonal type. But it was social conditioning, not biology, at the root of nearly all typing-blamed behaviors. Maverick’s own personality provided strong evidence against the legitimacy of pheromonal archetypes. 

Molly or no, Maverick wanted nothing more than to scream his accomplishments from every available rooftop while flipping off the whole world with both hands. But if he wanted to continue flying under the radar, as it were, it wouldn’t do to break the character he’d established so far. Keeping a mask on exhausted Maverick, but it was safe.And he could always brag to Goose and Carole later.

Of course, it was one thing to keep his cool shut away in an office with Charlie. It was another thing entirely to control himself once everyone took to the air for their first sortie. Somewhere in the air with him was Iceman. Watching him. Evaluating him. Waiting to see what Maverick was made of. 

So of course Maverick _had_ to show off. Not a lot, not enough to gray Goose’s hair. Just a little showing off would do. Maverick wouldn’t do anything _too_ dangerous: he wanted to prove to Iceman he was worth the time of day, not run the guy off. More than anything, he wanted Iceman to look at him with those soft, sweet eyes even if only once more.

He spotted Jester coming in low through a canyon and grinned. _Hello, there._ At 9000 feet Jester was a full 1000 feet below hard deck, but maybe that was part of the trick. Maybe they told you the rules and expected you to know when to follow along and when to break off and get creative. That had to be it, right? Why else would Jester be breaking the rules right out of the gate? Now _here_ was an opportunity for some hot shot maneuvering; he’d get Iceman’s attention _and_ get in good with the teachers in one go. 

Ignoring Goose’s pleas not to act like a bleach-drinking dumbass, Maverick broke away from his wingman to speed after Jester.

It _was_ what They wanted, right? TOPGUN, the Navy, the instructors. Maverick told himself it was what they wanted, over the sounds of Goose hollering in his ear and over his own emaciated conscience telling him that showboating for a sexy alpha was, objectively, a stupid idea.

But Maverick hadn’t earned his callsign for being careful, as Charlie had pointed out. And even if he _was_ below the hard deck, he had to at least earn some points for his braking trick, right? It was dangerous but effective and he was _good_ enough to mitigate the danger, so was it not appropriate? Strategically sound? Generally cool? And if he wanted to buzz the tower afterward to show how confident he was, was it not sexy as all hell? Surely Iceman would make a move now. 

* * *

Iceman did not make a move on Maverick. Air Boss Johnson did by proxy, in the form of screaming at Jester and Viper in Viper’s office. And then Viper had chewed Maverick out for being stupid and dumb and an insult to pilots everywhere. He’d looked genuinely disappointed and hadn’t raised his voice once, which made Maverick wish he’d gotten screamed at, too.

On the way to the locker room, Goose waited until people were out of earshot to add his own scathing perspective on Maverick’s “little mating display.”

“Flying okayish means not getting noticed for being _too good,_ Mav. It _doesn’t_ mean you should attract attention for being spectacularly bad. Even if that number includes a Mr. Kazansky. Not worth it.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Maverick grumbled. He swiped at Goose, who sidestepped neatly to avoid the slap.

Maverick and Goose entered the locker room just as Hollywood and Wolfman were leaving it. Both of them gave Maverick a couple condescending pats on the head as they walked off. 

Maverick, feeling high strung from the day’s events, thought about running after them to return fire but decided against it when he heard the low rumble of Iceman’s voice through the locker room door. Like a moth to a flame, nothing else in the world mattered to Maverick more than getting close enough to feel the burn.

“All right, Mav.” Goose cleared his throat. “I’ll go in first and do the talking. It’s probably just Iceman and Slider in there, so _don’t_ say something stupid.”

Maverick nodded, feeling more agreeable now that the worst was over. Sure, Viper’s scolding had been unpleasant, but the higher ups _had_ to scold him, right? It was nothing personal. He’d lost points in the competition, which sucked eggs, but the _real_ prize at stake was Iceman’s approval, obviously.

Goose walked in first, heading over to engage Iceman, who was still at his locker changing. Maverick slipped in behind, undoing his flight suit while Goose ran interference. 

But today, Iceman wasn’t in a mood to be interfered with: the slide of skin on fabric and a hand on his shoulder was Maverick’s only warning before Iceman spun him around. Reflexively, Maverick braced himself for a punch; Iceman didn’t look furious, though, just let down and more than a little irritated. Like he’d had higher hopes for Maverick that Maverick’s carelessness had obliterated.

Iceman kept his eyes firmly on Maverick’s face: no coy once-overs, no soft humor. “So is that your act? You do the clumsy shy boy thing on the ground and then fly like a cowboy?”

Agony. It took an act of god for Maverick to keep himself from staring at his feet. “I...was just…”

“Being a hazard to everyone else in the air with you.”

Goose stepped around Iceman and in front of Maverick, who felt shamefully relieved to be pushed aside. “What’s your problem, Kazansky?”

“My _problem,”_ Iceman said, moving around Goose to flank Maverick from the side, “is that he’s everyone’s problem. It’s not safe for him to fly like he’s the only one who matters up there. Maybe nothing happened this time, but what about the next time? I’m not saying we all have to like each other, but I have to trust who’s up there with me. Whose side are you on, Mitchell?”

Oh. _Oh._ This was so, so much worse than Viper’s lecture. Maverick wanted to dig a hole through the locker room floor and flee society to become a mole person. How could he fix this? Was it even fixable? Was there anything _to_ fix? If Iceman wouldn’t accept his behavior, perhaps he might accept an apology. Was Maverick sorry? Well, no. Not really. Not for the act itself. But for pissing Iceman off? Yes.

“Oh, like he needs to hear that from you, Kazansky.” Goose put his hands on his hips. _“First_ of all—”

“No, Goose. It’s okay.” Maverick spoke quickly, forcing the words out before he lost his nerve. “He’s right.”

Goose shut his mouth so fast Maverick was worried he’d bit his tongue. Iceman’s eyebrows disappeared into his hairline—or they would have if his hairline hadn’t been full of gel and tortured into a 90 degree angle.

“You’re right,” Maverick said as convincingly as he could. “It was dangerous and I shouldn’t have done it. I’m sorry. For making you feel like you can’t trust me.”

Iceman tilted his head to the side and squinted down at Maverick with a confused look on his face. He clearly wasn’t expecting that sort of response. What _had_ he been expecting? A punch? An argument?

“All right,” Iceman said warily. His arms, which had been folded defensively, slowly made their way back to his sides. 

And it _was_ all right, because Iceman’s foul mood was unwinding, falling into a heap on the floor, forgotten if only for a moment. Mission to Obtain Iceman’s Affection: not a complete failure. Maverick _had_ learned something valuable today: recklessness was not the way to Iceman’s heart. It wasn’t even a shortcut or a viable detour. If he wanted attention, he would have to get it through feats of skill. He’d leave room for creativity, but only within the parameters set by Viper and Jester. Yeah. Yeah, he could do this. 

“I, uh...thanks for talking some sense into me,” Maverick added. “I really needed that.” Perfect. All he had to do now was take in Iceman’s response and go from there. 

The baffled expression on Iceman’s face transformed into something more like intrigue. Maverick took advantage of the pause to memorize every feature on Iceman’s body, of which so much was on display. Any genuine regret he’d felt for his actions vanished into a fine red mist in the face of Iceman’s tacit approval of the apology. 

Maybe now would be a good time to ask Iceman on a date. Yeah, that would be good. Because now Iceman knew he was good at flying _and_ willing to own up to his mistakes. Fuck yeah. Everything was starting to come together. And now that soft look was back in Iceman’s eyes. Beautiful, beautiful eyes—irises like a mason jar of buckwheat honey on a sunny windowsill...that irresistible tang of pheromones hovering atop the generic soap he’d used to wash off after the hop. 

He’d probably just come from the shower—his hair was still damp with freshly-applied product—and now Maverick wished he’d rushed into the locker room right away just to catch a glimpse of Iceman, water running down his body, rivers of soap suds streaming across—

“Jesus Christ, just kiss already. Shit.” Slider breezed by in a towel, a toothbrush sticking out of the corner of his mouth.

Maverick, realizing his body had moved itself several inches closer to Iceman, jumped backward and nearly into his locker to get away. The tension in the room shattered, snapping a metaphorical hand towel to Maverick’s metaphorical ass. Okay, so he’d been swooning. But only a little. A normal amount of swooning had occurred. Goose had probably been swooning, too. And Slider.

But he didn’t stop to check, instead choosing to spin around and undress in record time, retreating into the nearest shower stall before his sanity collapsed around him, leaving only a wreck of a man whose only thoughts were of naval aviators tall, blond, and capable. Through the curtain Maverick heard Goose heave a mighty sigh. 

Maverick heard Iceman laugh. “You sure have your hands full, Mother Goose.” 

“On that we can agree, Mr. Kazansky. On that we can agree.”

* * *

Goose invited himself over to dinner. Maverick didn’t mind; this was par for the course and Goose never barged in without supplying the food himself.

“I am _begging_ you to be more careful, Mav. That’s all. I’m not gonna give you a lecture because I know you already got one, but please. Just think a little next time before you go full crazy.”

Maverick laid his silverware on the table and stared into his potato soup. Goose had requested bacon and cheese and no green onions, just like Maverick always ordered. That was just like Goose, to notice the little things.

“I’m sorry about today, Goose.” And this time, Maverick actually _was_ sorry. “I should’ve been thinking about you. I know you have a family and graduating would mean a lot to you…I want to win, too. And I wasn’t thinking about all that today.”

Goose sighed. “No, Mav. To be honest with you, I’d happily graduate in last place if it meant you were still safe. Sometimes it just hits me so hard, all the things that could happen to you if you were found out. I don’t want that for you, Mav. It’s not about winning. Not for me.”

Maverick felt the hot sting of tears trying to make their escape and bit the side of his cheek hard like he always did to keep them at bay. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time Goose saw him cry—it’d be more like the hundredth—but he didn’t want to end the day with a crying headache. Then Goose would chide him for breaking the rules _and_ getting dehydrated.

“Tomorrow,” said Maverick. “I’m going to turn it around, Goose. I promise. I’m going to fly my best.”

“Ish.”

“My bestish.”

Why not? It would appease Goose, it would improve Maverick’s standing in class, _and_ it would prove to Iceman that he was worthy of notice. _Operation Seduce Thomas “Iceman” Kazansky the Sequel: Bigger, Better, and with Less Stupidity_ was now fully underway. 

* * *

And it worked. 

The next day Maverick arrived at the hangar bright-eyed and optimistic, having spent the previous evening reminding himself to keep his promise. He’d even left himself a sticky note in the bathroom: _Don’t Be Stupid!!!!_

Iceman gave him a Look in the locker room but said nothing other than “Mitchell,” in response to Maverick’s greeting. It wasn’t dismissive or inviting. It said _we’ll see_ in a way that made Maverick desperate to prove himself worthy of Iceman’s regard. 

The rest of the morning passed quickly and without incident, except for an interesting diversion that occurred when Jester showed up to class a few minutes late smelling strongly of a satisfied molly at the apogee of his heat: Vinny.

Every one of the students, all of them alphas but Maverick, straightened up from their casual sprawl of limbs when they scented it: partly respect, partly instinctive interest. Maverick looked down at the floor; Goose put a hand on Maverick’s knee and gave his leg a little pat of reassurance. Without a single acknowledging remark, Jester began his lecture. There was no need to speak aloud what everyone already knew.

Maverick flew fast and hard that day, but colored within the lines. A few times he felt that little push to be impulsive, but yesterday’s stunts had let off some of the pressure he’d been building up in the weeks before arriving at Miramar. His do-something-crazy-or-die tank was running low for the moment, so it wasn’t too much of a burden to put some big boy pants on and follow the rules for once. For Iceman. For Goose, and also for himself...but _also_ also for Iceman.

He focused so intently on his flying that it wasn’t until Hollywood high-fived him in the locker room that Maverick realized he’d pulled ahead in points. 

“Nice recovery, space cadet,” Hollywood ribbed him. Unlike yesterday’s condescending head pats, this time the teasing felt affectionate.

“Thanks, man.”

“Hey, you think Jester was a little distracted today, or what?” Wolfman called out from the showers. He was answered by a chorus of snickers from the other alphas.

“Hell no,” Slider said. “Everybody knows a good heat does _wonders_ for a man’s health. Shit, _I’d_ fly like he does if I went home to _that_ at night. Maybe I’ll slip in the back door when Heatherly’s at work, see where things go.”

“You better not try it,” Sundown said from another shower stall. “Or what you’re gonna get is a boot in your ass. You’ll _wish_ they’d just kicked you out, then.”

“That’s not going to happen,” Maverick said, smiling to himself from the safety of his own shower stall. “Vinny has excellent taste. Why settle for bottom shelf when you can afford the best?”

This set off a chorus of hoots that only ended when a commander poked his head in and told everybody to shut the hell up. Goose put his khakis on in a rush after his shower.

“I’m just checking in with the office about my weekend leave,” he told Maverick at the doorway. “Don’t go home without me.” He trotted off, his footsteps fading out as he made his way to the administration desk.

Just as Maverick was about to leave, Iceman caught him by the arm. Maverick started; he hadn’t forgotten Iceman was there—how could he ever?—but he’d figured Iceman would be a little miffed about Maverick’s lead in points, excellent flying aside. Was Maverick’s reckoning here at long last? Would Iceman beat his ass with those beautiful hands? 

But when Maverick looked up at Iceman’s face, there was that interested look again from the O-Club—less alcohol fueled this time, but no less striking. 

Did he smell just as good to Iceman as Iceman did to him? What did he smell of: the papery, fresh linen smell of a beta, or something more? Something that, by all accounts, shouldn’t have been possible?

“There’s a hockey game on Friday night I’m going to catch,” Iceman said. Maverick searched his face for meaning, but there was none to be found. “The Panthers made it to the semifinals. I think Slider and everyone else is planning to go into town, but I’ll be at home.”

Maverick’s heart thumped at an alarming rate. Was Iceman inviting him to—? No. Better not to assume. Maybe this was a test of some sort. What Iceman would have been testing, Maverick had no idea; decoding conversations was not his strong suit. Living the past decade and a half in fear of saying or doing The Thing that could get him caught did not have a beneficial effect on his social IQ.

“Oh, that’s nice.” Maverick waited awkwardly, half expecting a punchline. 

Iceman rolled his eyes. “I’m asking if you want to come over, Mitchell.”

Oh. _Oh._ Dear god—this was happening. “I’d love to.” Maverick knew he sounded a little breathless but couldn’t bring himself to care. “Right after class Friday, or later?”

Iceman smiled at him, equal parts pleased and predatory. By inches he moved closer, breaching Goose’s typical boundaries for acquaintance-level interactions. It was the closest Maverick had been to a relative stranger in months. “Just like that? You don’t have to ask your mother first? I heard about you and him. Heard he squared up with a SEAL who wanted to sample the wares.” 

Maverick flushed and hated himself a little for it. Why couldn’t he be _cool_ for once in his life? 

“Oh, Goose? Yeah. He’ll be out of town this weekend anyway. I don’t mind, really. He just has really, uh, high standards. For me.” 

Iceman leaned forward and braced an arm against Maverick’s locker. He was so very, very large and near. Maverick once again refrained from mashing his face into Iceman’s chest. It was, somehow, even more difficult sober. 

“Is that right, Mitchell? Do I meet them?” 

“Goose’s standards?” Maverick’s eyes flicked to the door. At any moment Goose would come barreling in ready to throw hands with Iceman for the crime of standing too close to his pilot. 

“Sure, but I’m more interested in yours.”

If Maverick swayed forward just a little, he’d be able to kiss Iceman right on the mouth. Why his brain had chosen to impart to him this fucking useless information was beyond understanding. To imagine what he wanted now and could not have amounted to torture.

“Oh. Yes. I mean—you do. Meet my standards. A lot.”

“So I’ll see you Friday, then? Seven PM.” Iceman’s eyes were so tender and good and perfect. Maverick wanted to dive right into them. Naked.

“Yeah. Yeah, you will. Count on it.”

“Okay...I will.”

Iceman left the locker room, passing right by Goose on his way back in. Maverick caught the suspicious glare Goose leveled at the other man, but thankfully there was no violence. Goose wouldn’t punch another alpha’s lights out simply for being alone in a room with Maverick. Even he wasn’t _that_ protective. Probably.

“What did Iceman want with you, Mav?” Goose leveled upon Maverick an equally suspicious but considerably more loving glare. It was more like a...benign glower.

“Oh, you know. Just wanted to talk.”

Goose huffed and grabbed his car keys from the locker. “Talk, huh? He looked like he wanted a ticket for the All You Can Eat Mav-Buffet. ‘Talk’ my ass.”

Maverick gave Goose a sideways look. “I’d let Iceman _eat_ my ass for sure.”

Goose couldn’t stop himself from laughing then. Sneaky deflections _never_ worked, but if you could wrangle a chuckle out of Goose he was more likely to let things slide. For now, at least.

“I know you would, Mav. That’s the entire problem here.”

* * *

On Friday evening, after a thrilling week of playing first-place tango with Iceman and Slider, Goose and Maverick stood on the porch holding hands and saying their temporary goodbyes. Carole had driven down with Bradley and a rental car to spirit Goose away to some coastal B&B north of San Diego. It was no island paradise, but at least Maverick wouldn’t be there to derail all hope of fun and romance by crying on the bathroom floor for two days. 

After accepting a kiss on the cheek from Carole and a moist, cracker-filled kiss on the mouth from Bradley, Maverick braced himself for a summative lecture on proper weekend behavior from Goose. Goose did not disappoint.

“Here we are, Mav,” he said, gesturing grandly to all the world.

“Here we are, indeed,” Maverick agreed with a grin.

“I am leaving now with my wife and child to experience a weekend retreat.” Goose pointed to the car parked in the driveway, just in case Maverick required a visual.

“Yes you are.” Maverick waved at Bradley, who waved back with a fistful of crackers.

“And you will be here, alone, making good choices.” No, actually.

“Yes I will.” Lies.

Goose gripped Maverick’s hand tighter. After a moment of hesitation he grabbed both of Maverick’s hands, completing the image of a young soldier leaving his high school sweetheart to go fight in The War. Slider, who lived next door and was sitting on his porch, let out a wolf whistle and then an evil cackle at Goose and Maverick’s middle finger joint counterattack.

“Mav? Mav, look at me. Look at me, okay? Look into my eyes.”

“I am looking, Goose. Right into your eyes.” 

“Repeat after me.”

“After me.”

“I will not go to Iceman’s house.”

“I will not go to Iceman’s house.”

“I will not let Iceman come to _my_ house.”

“I will not let Iceman come to my house.”

“I will not let Iceman touch me.”

“I will not let Iceman put his big, beautiful hands all over my soft, tender body.”

“I will not enter into sexual congress with the Iceman.”

“I will not fuck Iceman or let Iceman fuck me.”

“I will _not_ go to Iceman’s house.”

“I will not go to Iceman’s house.”

“I will _not_ go to Iceman’s house.”

“I will not go to Iceman’s house.” 

Thirty minutes later, Maverick was at Iceman’s house.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Maverick, you're so FUCKING stupid. 
> 
> Every time I go back and read over these beginning chapters I look more and more forward to the post-Archive Warning version of Maverick, who is the saltiest dickhead on planet Earth. The Archive Warning is not only for You Know Who—it is also for Maverick's good behavior.
> 
> If you are reading, I'd love to hear from you! Comments are life and fuel my soul. Communicating about what I write is my favorite part about writing and at the top of my motivational pile.


	5. Wishing to be beautiful

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter Maverick Mitchell does not get fucked on Iceman's couch

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Maverick earned his dick sucking degree from Auntie Angel University. It is SO important that you know this.

Iceman let him in with that subtle smile on his face, dressed down in jogging pants and a fitted t-shirt. When he shut the door and held his hand out, Maverick grabbed it, delighted that Iceman wanted to get this thing going right away. And hell, if the Iceman wanted to start this by holding hands, then so be it. Once again, Iceman laughed at him, but he didn’t pull his hand away either. 

“Your jacket, Mitchell. I’m going to hang it up.”

Maverick’s stomach dropped to his feet in mortification. Of course Iceman wasn’t trying to hold his hand. Why would he do that two seconds after Maverick came into his house? Maverick’s face heated up. 

_ I really ought to start up a tab for humiliation incidents,  _ Maverick thought. Especially where Iceman was concerned. One laugh, ten dollars. Anything resembling slapstick humor, fifty dollars. Anything involving sex, a hundred. He’d be able to afford that Ducati in no time.

“Sorry,” Maverick mumbled. He hoped there weren’t any mirrors nearby. He didn’t need to look to tell he was bright red.

“By all means, feel free to continue when I’m done,” Iceman said. As Iceman hung up the jacket, Maverick crept away until he was on the opposite side of the kitchen table. 

He didn’t regret coming over but he  _ would _ have to play this carefully. His medication might have fooled tests and casual sniffs, but who knew what would happen once Iceman got closer? He definitely wasn’t going to have  _ sex _ with Iceman. Not now. 

Not penetrative sex, anyway. His medication lessened his slick but didn’t get rid of it entirely; it was one of the reasons why people instilled in him a fear of hospital stays and physical exams. If you knew ahead of time, you could prepare. If not...doom. Butt fun of all sorts, consequently, was off the table. 

So as much as it pained him to admit it, Maverick was probably going to have to leave horny. Mainly because of the slick thing, but there were plenty of other things to be paranoid about. Like semen. Semen tended to have a concentrated pheromonal aroma—would the meds be strong enough to eliminate the scent? Maverick had no idea. It wasn’t like the FDA was running tests on bathtub blockers. There was no disclaimer to read, no cheat sheet to reference. And either way, it wasn’t worth the risk. Maverick wanted to be  _ merely _ reckless tonight, not balls to the wall stupid.

Iceman noted Maverick’s retreat with a quirk of his lips; he probably thought Maverick was just nervous. Showed how much  _ he _ knew.

“Help yourself to whatever you want from the fridge,” Iceman said, waving Maverick on. 

Maverick opened the fridge door and peered in. There was a selection of singles, probably from the make-your-own six pack section at the liquor store a mile up the road. Maverick wondered if Iceman had done it on purpose, not knowing his guest’s preferences. Or, Maverick thought, the guy could just like variety. After all, it wasn’t like Iceman’s life choices revolved around him or anything.

Brown ale in hand, Maverick turned to ask Iceman what he wanted, only to be presented with Iceman’s chest six inches from his face. 

“Do you,” Maverick said hesitantly, “want something, too?”

“I do want something,” Iceman replied, leaning forward. For a heart-stopping moment Maverick thought he was about to be kissed. 

And then Iceman reached around him and took another beer for himself from the fridge. Maverick was frozen in place, lost in a world of what-ifs and should-I-let-hims. He  _ wanted _ Iceman to kiss him. So very badly. Kissing would be safe, right?

“Well,” Iceman said, walking into the living room. “Are you coming?”

_ Probably will after I leave, _ Maverick thought to himself.

* * *

“Your jacket is nice,” Iceman said casually. “Where’d you get it?”

They were together on Iceman’s couch in name only: a good three feet of space separated them, although Iceman had his arm slung invitingly on the inside back. It made a cozy little nook between his body and the cushions, a perfect space that Maverick thought he’d fit right into.

“Yeah,” Maverick said. He picked at the label on the beer. “It was my dad’s. Most of the patches are mine, though. It’s one of the only things I was able to keep. My mom—nevermind.” He flushed and ducked his head. Iceman wanted to fuck him, not hear his life story.

“I see,” Iceman said neutrally. 

Did he, though? With the reputation the Kazanskys had in the Navy—their history stretched back two whole centuries—there was no way he didn’t already know about Maverick’s dad. People like that  _ always _ knew. Did Iceman know Maverick’s father had died a traitor? Was the story something his own father shared with him over dinner? Did Iceman see only the potential for failure every time he looked Maverick in the eye? Was Maverick even worth fucking?

As the evening wore on, Maverick gradually relaxed; the beer helped. Though he wasn’t particularly interested in hockey, he paid attention when the game was on. Eventually Iceman realized Maverick had no idea what the hell was happening and inserted commentary. Apparently many people watched hockey games for the fights more than the game itself. Maverick could appreciate that, at least.

“Why are they all hugging each other?” It was weird. Every time a couple players got into a scuffle—a scrum, Iceman called it—all the rest of the players would skate towards one another and hug. Or hold hands.

“It’s to keep the fights fair,” Iceman explained. He was smiling again when Maverick looked at him.

“Maybe we should do that in class,” Maverick said, the alcohol giving him courage to say silly things. “Once somebody gets a lock on Jester or Viper the rest of us have to land and hold hands.”

Iceman laughed. “You and your holding hands. Is that a favorite pastime of yours?”

“Maybe,” Maverick said coyly. “How else will I get noticed?”

Iceman gave him a sideways look. “You seem to have a talent for getting noticed in other ways.”

There it was. “I was wondering when you were going to bring that up.” The label fell from Maverick’s beer to the floor. He’d finally picked it to death.

“I don’t mean it in a bad way,” Iceman said. He dropped his arm from the back of the couch and scooted in a little closer. Maverick held his breath. “You’re just not what I expected, is all. After everything I heard about you, I thought you’d be...”

_ Arrogant, out of control, dangerous, stupid, foolish, unpredictable, no good, waste of space— _

“Different,” Iceman finished.

“Oh, yeah?” Maverick looked down at the floor, seriously considering the merits of picking the label back up so he could shred it anxiously in his lap.

“Yeah. You’re the only ones out of our whole class to see a MiG up close, you know. You and Goose.”

“I like taking risks, I guess.” Maverick shrugged helplessly. How fucking long were these commercial breaks? This was agonizing. He wanted Iceman to keep talking to him forever. He wanted to be kissed. He wanted to run home screaming and hide under the covers. Maybe he’d call Goose and preemptively apologize for betraying him and everything they held dear.

“I can tell,” Iceman said wryly. “What I don’t get is why you act the way you do when you’re not fooling around. It’s hard for me to reconcile the guy who flipped off a MiG in an inverted dive with the guy who aspires to blend in with the wallpaper and agrees with me that he’s flying like a dickhead.”

Fair. That was fair. Maverick bowed his head.

“I just...sometimes I try to hold it in. And then it makes everything that much worse when it finally comes out. It’s all bottled up in there.”

“Why?”

On screen, the hockey game came back on. Maverick glanced at it, hoping Iceman would too, but Iceman’s eyes were locked firmly on his face.

“I don’t want to be noticed. Goose says it’s not safe. He’s right.” Shit, the beer was making him more loose than expected.  _ Shut up, Maverick. _

Iceman huffed. “Is Bradshaw running your entire life? I thought he just kept you from getting tail. If he’s got your career by the balls too, you  _ might _ have a problem.”

“No, it’s not like that. It just...just doesn’t feel safe. It’s better this way. He knows that.” Maverick’s throat tightened. Where would he even be now if not for Goose’s guidance? His protection? His distractions? In prison maybe, on felony charges for buying illegal heat blockers. “I know it, too.”

Iceman leaned closer, nearly touching Maverick’s nose with his own. “You like taking risks, huh cowboy?”

“Yes,” Maverick whispered. He could hear the meaty slaps of another scrum underway. Sounded like a big one.

“Want to take one now?”

“I would like that.” 

Iceman kissed him.

He was a  _ good _ kisser. Not that Maverick had much experience evaluating those sorts of things. Nevertheless he let Iceman take the lead, closing his eyes to narrow the entire universe to this couch and the things transpiring upon it.

The sweet, malty taste of Iceman’s beer filled his senses, dancing along his nose and into his mouth when Iceman turned his head and deepened the kiss. Maverick responded with shy hesitation, avoiding any exuberant movements that might give his inexperience away. 

For Maverick, this kiss did not feel like the ending of a fantasy or the apex of his life’s work; rather, it was the beginning of a dream, a promise for something more. His mind flailed wildly, grasping in desperation for something to hold on to, some future circumstance that would afford him every opportunity to feel this good again and again.

Maverick was not normally so strongly affected by alpha scent. On film, the uncontrollable ecstasy following a male omega scenting an alpha was stereotype layered on conjecture. If male omegas were compelled to writhe on the floor in response to a whiff of alpha pheromones, how would they get anything done? They’d never be able to leave their houses for fear of spontaneous orgasms.

Iceman’s scent was different. It took Maverick by the neck and pressed him down, made him feel desired. For the first time in his life, he wanted to concede. If Iceman was an invading force, Maverick was ready to wave a white flag and surrender.

It didn’t feel like war, though. Here, there was no contest. No points to keep track of. No score to settle. There was just Iceman and Maverick and this cheap couch and the heady bitterness of hops and that game on TV he didn’t understand.

Iceman drew back slowly from the kiss, as though he regretted having ended it. “What do you want, Mitchell? What are you after?”

What  _ was _ Maverick after?  _ Your cock balls-deep in my ass. My face pressed against some nice flannel sheets so I don’t wake up the neighbors. Holding on to the headboard like my life depends on it. You, fucking me all night. Doing it again in the morning. Our hands brushing together when we both reach for the coffee creamer. Stupid arguments about wall paint swatches that we don’t remember the next day. _

Maverick glanced down at Iceman’s lap. Sweatpants or no, there was no hiding that erection. Iceman  _ wanted _ him. Maverick came to a decision. A compromise, of sorts.

“I want to put my mouth on you,” Maverick said. “Can I?”

* * *

Maverick Mitchell understood that his sex life had been  _ very _ strange. It sort of had to be that way, as a closeted molly living in anti-molly circumstances. You couldn’t just let anybody plumb your depths. Even a cursory finger by an experienced partner would reveal the Lube Ass. 

Or that’s what Goose called it anyway: “lube ass” to describe the whole package, and “ass lube” to describe the contents. They’d collaborated on that term (and several other terms) to add to the ridiculous list of colloquialisms Maverick had heard over the years. 

“Slick” was the formal medical term for ass lube. Other terms Maverick knew of included the following: pole grease, ass juice, the other shits, slip-n-slide, alpha sploosh, WD-40, red sauce (archaic and mainly used by mollies of the McCarthy era), Aunt Joe, crisco, and Peggy’s Mayonnaise. Maverick was fine with those. 

The nicknames for his pheromonal type...now  _ those _ were awful. Even molly had a negative feeling to it; it was commonly used where Maverick grew up and far less explicit than some of the others, but there was still a certain condescension to it: male omegas were effeminate because X, and femininity is Weak and Bad, therefore male omegas were weak and bad. 

And that was just the cis experience—god help you if you weren’t. At the end of the day everybody wanted a molly for gawking at and fucking. Not for loving. Not for taking seriously.

And  _ that _ was why Maverick was 26 with more sexual experience than the average rent boy but with less kissing experience than the average 6th grader. The many molly sex parties he’d attended in his life came with one universal string attached. Everyone was there for one thing: fucking. Or releasing the tension they’d been carrying around. Or taking their frustrations out on a fellow molly’s ass, perhaps.  _ Not _ kissing. 

No romance. Cautious familiarity. There was no point in getting attached. They all knew it, even if the rule went unsaid. You showed up at the rental house (usually some absentee millionaire’s  _ other _ mansion), paid your share of the rental fees, fucked or got fucked or both, and then you left when it was over. Even if you hooked up regularly with a fellow frequent flier, things rarely went beyond tepid companionship.

So Maverick  _ had _ had sex, though almost exclusively with other partygoing mollies. There was a familiar pattern to it that he’d grown used to after a while. The mollies would spend a few hours topping and bottoming or what have you, and then lounge in the snack area when they wanted a break, possibly smoking outside if the weather was nice, discussing only the safest of topics. Never was there any real intimacy.

It felt like shopping in a lot of ways: you wandered around checking the place out, taking note of which areas or rooms had been reserved for what activities. Maverick usually cruised in the spots cordoned off for those who didn’t want spectators; the whole affair was vanilla and safe. He had a couple regularish party partners, all of them people who preferred privacy. If you wanted to have more advanced entertainment, you went to the appropriately labeled room. There were  _ rules, _ after all. 

And boy, were there options. You could do BDSM, you could do orgies, you could wait in line to fuck in the jaw-dropping rich people showers, you could do missionary with the lights off, or anything you could think of as long as the other participants agreed to it. Usually a trusted alpha—male, female, and et cetera—would be invited in for some extra fun. Often they were a career sex worker looking to make some extra cash. Betas occasionally came in, almost always as a molly’s partner. 

Female omegas  _ never _ joined in, at least from what Maverick had seen; if anyone found out they’d attended, that could mean a black mark on their reputation forever. A lowering of their market value. Carole had told Maverick once that certain members of Goose’s family  _ still _ snubbed her for working as secretary in a house of “ill repute,” despite the fact that no other businesses near her parents’ house would hire a female omega.

Once, Maverick got turned around at a party and wandered into a room where a molly was getting spitroasted by two male alphas. After a moment of bashfulness he wound up staying to watch once everyone had given him the green light. 

Maverick told himself he’d never be into something  _ that _ kinky—he was too nervous about losing control to tolerate blindfolds and handcuffs, much less something that demanded his total surrender—but by the end of the scene he had too much of a boner to deny the effect it had had on him.

The alphas—both of them seasoned molly party professionals—certainly noticed, and asked him if he wanted a turn once they could get hard again. They were polite and accepted Maverick’s stuttering refusal with grace, but later that evening Maverick let the taller one bend him over the arm of a couch and fuck the ever loving shit out of his hole while a couple people shouted encouragement from the next room over. 

And holy fuck had that felt good. The pheromonal cocktail created by the melding of scents was simply divine. People weren’t wrong when they talked up sex with alphas.  _ Experienced _ alphas, specifically—the party organizers did not suffer fools, but sometimes a navel-gazing dipshit fell through the cracks. Pheromonal synchronization, after all, did not equate to being good at sex in the technical sense. A molly as experienced as Maverick could smell a conceited alpha from a mile away. 

* * *

“You may put your mouth on me,” Iceman replied graciously: a noble granting permission for a peasant to entreat. He leaned back on the couch, propping himself up on one of the arms, his legs splayed in smug invitation.

Maverick put his hands on Iceman’s body, mapping the strong muscular legs with his palms as he traveled up towards the waistband. He wasted no time on further kissing, feeling too hungry for slow, romantic touches. 

With the tips of his fingers barely curling underneath the elastic he unwrapped Iceman like a present, revealing the lighter skin below Iceman’s tanned stomach and the trail of golden hair leading downward.

He could feel Iceman’s eyes on him when he got the sweatpants and underwear off, but Maverick didn’t look up. Iceman’s dick was significantly more interesting than whatever was going on up north. While Maverick studied his target, Iceman pulled his shirt off over his head and reached for Maverick’s, who raised his arms up, breaking penile eye contact just for a moment when the shirt went over his face.

“Are you enjoying the view?” No self-consciousness. Iceman  _ knew _ he looked good. So poised and haughty. In control. Ice cold, no mistakes. Typical alpha.

“I am,” Maverick said agreeably. It  _ was _ a nice penis: on the larger side and uncut, the way cis male alphas usually were—at least the ones Maverick had met at the parties. For some people it was just a matter of their parents not requesting the circumcision. But a lot of alpha guys took a weird amount of pride in it. Like their junk having a sweater on made it more manly or something. 

That inflated masculinity, in combination with the commonly held alpha belief that they did world a favor by allowing people to fuck them, generally amounted to disappointing coitus. Someone who thought they were inherently perfect had little motivation to improve. 

Based on his haughty behavior this fine evening, Iceman appeared to fit the arrogant alpha profile. Very unfortunate. But that didn’t mean there was no hope. Even the alphas who got invited to the molly parties had to be trained. Why not Iceman?

“Well, go ahead then,” Iceman teased. “What are you waiting for?”

A king in repose, Iceman surveyed his kingdom—the borrowed living room, the supplicant between his thighs, and TOPGUN itself—with the calm demeanor of a man assured of his supremacy. With a single hand he cupped Maverick’s face, sliding his palm down to press his fingers underneath Maverick’s chin, tipping his face up for a better view. 

Thoughtlessly, Iceman expected obedience. Servitude, even. And his only warning of the subversion to follow lived in Maverick’s eyes, which clawed up the rest of Iceman’s body to meet his challenging stare head on: half-lidded, the pupils peeking up at Iceman through dark eyelashes.

Five minutes later, Iceman’s composure was completely gone. He had the heel of one hand stuffed into his mouth, teeth nearly breaking his skin in an effort to keep his moans in check. The flush on his cheeks from the alcohol had doubled in intensity, fueled by the fire Maverick had sparked the moment he swallowed Iceman whole.

The beers helped chase some of Maverick’s earlier nervousness away. They also helped suppress his gag reflex, which Maverick put to good use by taking Iceman’s cock all the way in his mouth until his nose pressed into the spare, soft fat cushioning Iceman’s abdominal muscles. 

On the upstroke he used his hands to grip Iceman from the base and slide up all the way to the head, the whole shaft wet and shiny with saliva. Every so often he teased, slowing his hands and peppering the shaft with soft, barely-there licks.

Iceman wasn’t the first alpha Maverick had sucked off; the parties had given him plenty of opportunities for practice. From an objective standpoint, Maverick felt his blowjobs were at the professional level by now. Iceman probably thought so, anyway. From the way he squirmed around atop the cushions it was clear that he wasn’t used to having it this good. 

Even though Maverick was having a grand old time, he couldn’t stop himself from heckling Iceman. Just a little. Just as sweet revenge for all the tough-guy, hypermasculine flirting Maverick had endured for the past week. Reluctantly, he released Iceman’s cock from his mouth, leaving his hands still hard at work.

“You like it?” Maverick bit his lip to keep from grinning like a maniac. There was no telling how pissed off Iceman would be post-coital if Maverick went too far.

“Fuck. Yes,” Iceman moaned. Where  _ had _ that ice cold bastard gone off to?

Maverick squeezed his hands a little harder. There was enough spit left on the shaft to water a houseplant, so his palms glided effortlessly over the tender skin. 

“You want me to let you come?” He pitched his voice low, sultry with just a bit of delight to round it out.

_ “Fuck.” _

“Well, that’s very rude. Maybe I should go home.” 

Iceman stiffened in alarm, prompting Maverick to give Iceman’s right hip bone a kiss, just so he knew Maverick wasn’t being serious. He wanted to edge Iceman, not completely dominate him. Maybe another time.

“No.  _ Fuck. _ Oh,  _ fuck _ you, Mitchell.”

Maverick laughed. “You want to come in my mouth, Kazansky? Or on my face? On my ass? Or are you more adventurous than that?”

“Jesus, fuck.”

“You know, I’m not sure if he did. Biblical scholars are not in agreement on many things, including—”

“Fuck you, Mitchell,  _ yes _ I want to come. Fucking  _ do _ it.”

“If you insist.”

Maverick took Iceman’s cock in his mouth again and went back to work, intent on finishing the job. This time he let his mouth go to town on the shaft, sucking his cheeks in and pressing his lips in tight to keep a good grip. 

He had to be a little more careful with the tip—uncut people were a lot more sensitive there—but gradually Maverick worked back up to a rhythm that had Iceman grabbing at his hair just to hold on for dear life.

One of his hands slid down to grip Iceman’s balls; Maverick tugged on them experimentally and was rewarded with the dull pain of his hair being gripped even tighter. Iceman was beyond linguistic capability by this point: every time Maverick took him down to the base he groaned and held his breath, and every time Maverick worked his way back to the tip he released that breath in a sigh. Wonderful.

When his other hand slid around Iceman’s balls, Maverick felt him tense up a little. It was what Maverick expected; a lot of male alphas had baggage where anal penetration was concerned: they were all about giving, but receiving from anyone other than another alpha male was something Other People did (other people being mollies, who were Terminal Bottoms). Reciprocal butt stuff between male alphas occurred mainly in extremely dire circumstances, like being lonely and horny at sea.

They hadn’t discussed butt stuff ahead of time, so Maverick made it clear that his errand was external; he rubbed up against Iceman’s prostate from the outside in the hopes of shooting off some fireworks in Iceman’s brain. 

And shoot them off it did: Iceman curled his legs around Maverick’s shoulders, fencing him in and nearly making him gag when Iceman drew Maverick closer by hooking his ankles together.

“Shit, I’m—”

Maverick knew. He took Iceman down all the way one last time, sucking the life out of him, with his nose buried in rough, blond hair.  _ Damn, _ the smell was even more fantastic this close.

Iceman arched his back off the sofa when he came, filling the back of Maverick’s throat. Afterward, he lay back with a shell-shocked expression that had Maverick pinching himself not to laugh. Iceman threw a forearm over his face as he collected himself, hiding his expression from view; Maverick took the opportunity to grab a tissue from the coffee table and spit in it. No offense to Iceman, but he didn’t particularly enjoy the flavor of alpha spunk. Too bitter, too chalky.

“Shit, Mitchell,” Iceman panted. The arrogant persona had been stripped away—or more accurately, sucked away—leaving behind a mere mortal debauched to the point of looking deranged. “Who taught you how to do that?”

“Goose. We practice on each other when we’re bored.” It took considerable effort, but Maverick managed to keep his face totally blank.

Iceman’s mouth went slack with shock.

This time he didn’t manage to hold it in: Maverick burst out laughing so hard it hurt a little. Iceman looked slightly offended, leaning away ever so slightly from Mavericks apologetic leg-petting. 

“I’m just kidding, I’m kidding.” Maverick stroked Iceman’s thighs. “God, your  _ face. _ Hey, don’t make assumptions. Goose could be amazing at sucking dick.  _ You _ don’t know. Or...do you?”

Iceman blushed even more, the red on his cheeks creeping down into neck territory. The effect of his coming undone, when compared to the act he put on in class, tickled Maverick to no end; Iceman looked satiated and more than a bit frazzled, glancing all around the room like he couldn’t believe that this had just happened, with Maverick of all people, and in his own borrowed abode. 

Maverick almost poked Iceman in the ribs just to drive the cocky satisfaction he felt all the way home, but he held back. He had to let the guy have  _ some _ dignity. Otherwise, he might not return for more.

Sex had a way of doing this to people, Maverick reflected as he watched Iceman sit up and straighten himself out; it reduced people to bare components, revealing hidden gems and hidden shame alike underneath the public face. It was part of what Maverick loved about connecting to someone else like this. Stripped of his cocksure facade, Iceman could be no more than what he was now: Some Guy who’d just had maybe the best blowjob of his life.

“What?” Maverick said innocently. “Don’t tell me you didn’t  _ like _ it.”

Iceman glared at him, but Maverick could tell his heart wasn’t in it. “Mitchell, if you flew jets as well as you suck cock, they’d have just given you the trophy on day one. No competition required.” He looked a little embarrassed at his admission.

Maverick grinned down at him, giving Iceman a peck on the lips just because he could. “You can call me Maverick,” he said. “Or Mav. It’s what Goose calls me. I usually don’t go by my real names.”

Iceman looked away, as though overwhelmed by the intimacy of nomenclature. “All right,” he said. “You can call me Tom. Or Ice. It’s what Slider calls me sometimes.”

“That Slider. Such impeccable taste.” Maverick yelped a little when Ice grabbed his erection, which was trying to bore its way out of Maverick’s pants to get a piece of the action. Unfortunately for it, Maverick had no intention of letting that happen. The question was: how could he manage this next bit without Ice taking it the wrong way?

“You’re a little mouthy for a guy with a raging boner.”

Maverick tapped Ice on the tip of his nose with a finger. “Funny, I thought the same about you before I took you apart.”

Ice flushed again, but he didn’t release Maverick either. “Well?”

Maverick clamped his lips shut, averting his gaze from Ice as he groped around for his shirt. Iceman released him with a confused look on his face. He was sitting ramrod straight by the time Maverick’s head popped out of the collar, some of that guardedness back in his expression.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Maverick said.  _ Fuck, _ he hoped he could navigate this conversation without consequence. He almost wished Goose would climb through the window and drag him away so he wouldn’t have to come up with an excuse. Because while Maverick’s creativity in a jet was second to none, his creativity in social situations was—

“I, um. Have an infection.”

—bad.  _ So _ bad. Catastrophically bad.

_ “Not,” _ Maverick amended quickly after Ice’s eyes grew wide. “Like a sexual infection. Disease. Sexually transmitted disease. It’s, um, not contagious either. Bladder. Bladder infection. Lots of pain...down there. Burning pain.” 

At least, that’s how Carole had described the ones she got. She said you got them from accidentally getting no-no substances near the urethra, which was much more likely if all your equipment was closely bunched. Maverick hadn’t actually  _ ever  _ had a bladder infection. Could penis-havers even get those?

“A bladder infection.” Iceman raised a single, beautiful eyebrow.

Maverick studied the carpet. “Yeah.” All this awkward talk had at least accomplished one thing: he wasn’t even remotely hard anymore.

“Should you be doing the program if you have a painful infection? Don't those usually come with fevers?” 

Maverick still refused to look at him, but he could hear the suspicion loud and clear. Great. Now Ice thought he was some sort of weirdo. Which he was. But still: rude.

“Oh it’s not  _ that _ bad. It’s almost gone actually. I’m on the tail end of it but better safe than sorry. You know.” 

Maverick scratched at the couch fabric with a fingernail since his beer label was long gone. He wished interceptions could be handled like this: if you didn’t want the bogey to be a problem anymore, just don’t look at it! It'll go away sooner or later!

“Maverick.” Ice’s voice was flat. But there was enough of a smile in there that Maverick’s hopes weren’t entirely dashed. “If you’re not ready for more you can just say so. We have several weeks to do...whatever this is that’s happening. It’s fine.”

“Okay.”

“Maverick.”

_ “Okay. _ Damn, quit trying to snake Goose’s job. I don’t need two sheepdogs trying to herd me around. One is enough.”

Ice rolled his eyes when Maverick finally looked up. But his expression was warm and affectionate. Almost sentimental. 

* * *

Maverick lost himself reminiscing on the way home, even though the walk was less than ten minutes. The streets were empty of all other sentient life, leaving only the light of the moon and the rustle of the wind through the dune grasses. It was a wonderful evening to wander off the sidewalk and sit atop a lone sandy knoll while contemplating that evening’s events.

So. He’d sucked Iceman’s dick. That was fun.  _ And _ he’d been kissed.

Maverick had probably tried everything in the kama sutra at least once. He’d done his time in the sex swing trenches. He’d traversed the treacherous plains of butt stuff. He’d accepted the sword from the Lady of the Lake and taken his rightful place as Blowjob Emperor. He’d done unspeakable things with silicone.

But Iceman had been his first kiss.

(Okay,  _ technically, _ Maverick’s first kiss had been with Goose. On a hot summer night when he and Maverick and Carole were all drunk as hell, Carole dared them to lock lips and they had. It had been mostly chaste with a tasteful amount of tongue. She’d taken a photo and had it hidden away somewhere. It did  _ not _ count as a Real First Kiss. Goose, loyal friend that he was, agreed.)

But the shitty thing was, Maverick wasn’t particularly proud of his participation in the molly parties. Not like he could brag to anyone but Goose anyhow, but the whole experience left Maverick with more than a little anxiety about sex. After a while he started to avoid acts that required more than the usual level of trust; a lifetime of having nightmares about getting found out meant he never could loosen up and enjoy the damn thing: if he lost sight of the doors or windows while bottoming, then his whole body would freeze up in fear. 

It wasn’t bad for everyone, of course: some mollies loved the anonymity and detachment of the sex parties. Some of them came in groups of friends and had the time of their lives. Quite a few of them were out of the molly closet in their home countries and just partied for fun. 

Maverick just wasn’t one of those people. The other mollies were sympathetic to his desires, of course, but most didn’t understand. Many of them were already hardened to their own circumstances, accepting of the need for sexual pragmatism. They’d given up on true love a long time ago.

Maverick was much softer than that. He craved a romantic attachment to a big strong man who doted on him with passionate intensity—the most secret of all his fantasies involved being picked up and carried around by a tall alpha male who called him babe and told him he was the handsomest boy in the world. No sex required, just love and tenderness.

He hadn’t even told Goose that one. It felt shameful to fantasize about for reasons Maverick didn’t care to reflect upon. What was the point of letting the mental image grow more distinct? If he came out he’d get a DD immediately and end up pressured into a bond with some alpha dickhead who’d treat him like a pet at best and a fucktoy at worst. Just to  _ survive. _ It wouldn’t be living. It sure as hell wouldn’t be loving.

That’s what everyone said would happen, anyway. Even Goose said that. It wasn’t  _ mandatory _ for mollies to get bonded—a few in the past decade alone were famously single—but it was the best insurance for living a safe life. In America, mollies were discriminated against to the point where unless they had connections and were extremely lucky, they’d end up with some minimum wage, no-security job. At  _ best. _

Vinny was one of the fortunate ones. His alpha was a respected junior officer in the Navy with a steady career; Jester let Vinny work without raising a fuss, provided for him materially, and maybe loved him, too.

Maverick would never have those things. Of that he was certain. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Am enjoying the dichotomy of Maverick being a socially awkward dumbass who also knows 50 ways to make someone come using only one finger. Also, Maverick doesn't know this but Goose has been 37 people's first kiss. Goose is just really modest about it, you know?
> 
> Enjoying the feedback! Comments are the fuel which powers me. Please leave one if you’re reading and enjoying! I would love to hear from you. As is my custom my responses will be (1) heartfelt and (2) stupid.


	6. Alone together in the same room

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter Maverick Mitchell does not hold his mead well

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Actual footage of Iceman and Goose in this chapter:  
>   
> 
> 
> And Maverick is just over here like:  
> 

When he returned to base sans Carole and Bradley, Goose didn’t ask what kind of weekend fun Maverick had gotten up to. There was little doubt he suspected Maverick of tomfoolery (literally); but, as Maverick had showered excessively between Friday and Sunday night, there was no longer the hard evidence of Iceman’s scent to condemn him. Goose gave him what he probably thought was a mistrustful glower—he just looked constipated—and said nothing.

Maverick kept up his new and improved piloting method: he didn’t fly by the book, exactly—he couldn’t suppress his impulses _that_ much—but he got close enough to standard practice that he wouldn’t be admonished. There were no fancy trimmings, no graying of Goose’s hair unnecessarily, and no abandoning wingmen to do the aviation equivalent of shoving his ass in Ice’s face in open invitation.

Because now he knew Iceman would notice him if he was _good_ at flying, not if he acted like a dumbass. Maverick sometimes repeated this to himself in the mirror before leaving the house. Another sticky note joined his first: _Be good at stuff!!!!_

Goose had no complaints about Maverick’s miraculous turnaround, but he _did_ take umbrage with one particular consequence: Iceman, having already “sampled the wares” once without interruption, began flirting with Maverick more and more brazenly. 

If they were in class or in the air, Ice cloaked the flirting in double entendre, provoking more curt deflections from Goose than anything else. 

“I’m under you on your left, Ice.”

“It’s my favorite place for you to be, really. Feel free to get under me at any time, in any direction.”

“I’ve got radar lock on the hostile, Mav.”

“Goose, we’re supposed to be going after Viper. You have radar lock on _Ice.”_

“I said what I said.”

If Maverick and Iceman were alone, things got a little more hot and heavy. Once they got all the way to third base in a dusty corner of the hangar behind a tower of crates, with Maverick on his knees and Ice’s hand pulling at his hair so hard his eyes watered. A passing mechanic stopped things before they advanced any further, which was both a blessing and a curse from Maverick’s perspective. As it was, Maverick had to settle for a searing kiss and a rain check. 

If they were alone _plus_ Goose, however, Iceman’s naughtiness reached critical mass. Iceman generally wasn’t a touchy person, but he came up with all _sorts_ of excuses to touch Maverick’s ass if it meant Goose would see.

Sometimes Maverick wondered how much of Iceman’s interest was genuine and how much of it was pettiness designed to get maximum rise out of Mother Goose. It certainly felt a little of both, though Maverick hoped the former scenario won out in the end. Poor Goose was sighing quite a lot these days. And drinking more.

But it was _hard_ keeping his distance from Iceman. Maverick honestly didn’t think he could bring himself to return to the way things were before. Iceman had gone from giving Maverick a few secret, lingering looks in the locker room to brazenly cornering him in an empty shower stall and kissing him breathless. He didn’t even bother shutting the curtain if he thought no one else was in earshot. Hot.

And after all the trouble Iceman had gone through to find that shower stall and drag him in it for the purposes of kissing, it would be _rude_ for Maverick to refuse his advances. Politeness was a virtue, Maverick reminded Goose. So was being nice to people.

Goose thought these excuses were bullshit, as he told Maverick repeatedly while beating Iceman off with a stick (usually metaphorically but once literally after the horniest, sweatiest volleyball match in the history of the human race). But Goose’s protection, for all Maverick had grown accustomed to it, began to grate on Ice’s nerves. Ice went from mildly amused at Goose’s antics to openly irritated, bordering on belligerent, every time Goose racked up another successful cockblock. 

Maverick wondered how long it would be before they started whipping their dicks out to compare lengths. Or...maybe they’d start peeing on stuff to mark it territorially? Flexing? Screaming in each other’s faces like lascivious tomcats? Circling Maverick like sensual sharks fighting over a sexy dying whale? Or whatever the fuck foolishness male alphas did to establish their silly little pecking orders.

“Don’t you have a slice of pie warming your bed already, Bradshaw? Save a piece for the rest of us.” Ice was in a towel, sneering at Goose who had his hand firmly wrapped around Maverick’s wrist. “Your little Mother Goose routine is starting to wear out its welcome.” 

“I don’t particularly care about your feelings on the matter, Thomas,” Goose said loftily. “Come on, Mav. Let’s go home. You don’t have to let Iceboy rut all over you just because he thinks he earned it. I know you have higher standards than that.”

Maverick glanced at his towel meaningfully. “I should probably...get dressed first, Goose. I think going outside naked is illegal in California.”

Goose looked down. “Oh. Right. I’ll just let you get to that.”

Maverick looked over his shoulder nervously at Iceman, expecting to see him halfway across the room with a fist on collision course with Goose’s skull. Thankfully, he wasn’t: Ice was leaning against the lockers with half-lidded eyes, looking bored of it all. But he couldn’t hide his smell. Frustration and horniness occupied a great deal of Iceman’s brain, which Maverick took as a compliment. He allowed himself a sly grin and pulled his clothes on in record time.

“Another game at my place, Maverick?” Ice tilted his head invitingly.

Goose glared at Ice. Then he glared at Maverick, who attempted a contrite expression. 

“‘Another?’ Maverick, you promised.”

“I was...Ice was helping me with…”

“You’re both invited, naturally,” Iceman interrupted. “Everyone will be there. The Panthers made the finals, Mav. But I’m sure you remember that from last week. No private viewing this time, I’m afraid. You gonna show up? Or does your mom need you to be home by seven?”

Maverick quietly led Goose away by the hand before he went nuclear. He chanced another look over his shoulder to catch Iceman’s saucy little wave just as the door closed behind them.

* * *

At home, Goose didn’t say anything about The Locker Room Incident. He just grabbed two beers from the fridge, shotgunned one, and started chugging the second. He slumped over onto the counter and for several consecutive seconds Maverick felt something like guilt. Fortunately, it passed quickly. Guilt was poor for one’s health.

“You _really_ want to go to this thing, don’t you Mav?” 

Maverick resisted the urge to shuffle around like a student sent to the principal’s office trying to get out of detention. Goose kept his face on the counter, as though transdermally absorbing peace and tranquility from the Formica. 

“I don’t think anything’s going to happen, Goose.” 

Goose lifted a finger skyward without lifting his head. “Now _that_ I don’t believe in the slightest. But…all right. Maybe this will get something out of your system.” 

“Yes!” Maverick patted Goose on the head. Goose grunted. Maverick patted him again. “Goose.” 

“Mav.” 

“I feel the need…” 

“The need for speed?” 

“The need to get shitfaced!” 

“That doesn’t rhyme.” 

“Drink more and you won’t care.”

* * *

For his entire life, Maverick had been building up a resistance to what he called Molly Talk: the ribald and misinformed discourse non-mollies had about his kind. The military contained largely alphas and betas, with female omegas holding some base level non-combat roles and male omegas holding even baser level non-combat roles. So Maverick, being surrounded by alphas and betas, was treated to the exclusive locker room talk that non-mollies only discussed around one another. 

When it came to pheromone types, people _always_ had something to say. It was the one topic everyone could contribute to, after all. But the things alphas and betas said about omegas in general, and especially mollies, haunted him. Unfiltered prejudice leaked from the mouths of his comrades-in-arms like infection from an open wound, and the speakers often had no idea they were sick in the first place.

People were not gentle in their ruminations on Maverick’s kind, even the well-meaning ones. At best they offered ignorant sympathy—“It’s not their fault they’re idiots! Dumbasses deserve rights, too!”—but at worst...well, there were some conversations he’d been privy to that made him put his entire body under the covers at night and jump at unexpected noises for days afterward.

The exchange that took place at Ice’s house after the game was somewhere in the middle of benignly misinformed and violence-inclined. Everyone had shown up tipsy with even more alcohol in tow, trading it around in a complex bartering system that only made sense while wasted. Maverick ended up exchanging two lagers for a fifth of mead that Wolfman had brought for _some_ reason; by midnight Maverick was so plastered that walking was best done on four limbs.

His alpha male peers kicked off their pheromonal symposium with the standard sexual grandstanding. For an entire half hour, Maverick listened to several drunken accounts of the mind-blowing sex they’d all inflicted upon their many, many partners. He mostly ignored this bit as the stories mainly starred female omegas; the contents didn’t pertain to him and it wasn’t as though he was some authority on female omega biology and thus qualified to evaluate their statements. 

But when the topic came around to mollies, it became increasingly difficult for Maverick not to roll his eyes and provide corrections as he got drunker and drunker. Instead, he took a sip every time he heard something off-putting or inaccurate or downright predatory. He reminded himself over and over again in his head that they didn’t _know_ he was a molly, and if they _had_ known then they would feel differently...wouldn’t they? Of _course_ they would.

The drinking game was a fun little distraction at first, but as the conversation dragged on, Maverick began to consider if it had been a bad idea. There was only so much alcohol one could sip before death arrived to cash in. His only comfort was Goose, who contributed little to the discourse and every so often patted him comfortingly on the knee. 

Currently, the topic had strayed into “what all male omegas are secretly into” territory. It was one of Maverick’s least favorite tangents because it meant subjecting himself to the knowledge of male alphas’ suppressed fetishes. 

Of course, the male alphas didn’t see it that way; they thought they were revealing objective truths. They uncritically crafted such ideas in their mind as “all omegas want their toes sucked” rather than arrive at the far less generalizing conclusion of “I think I might have a foot fetish, actually.”

Case in point: Hollywood’s insistence that mollies were all dirty little sluts who secretly wanted to be dominated. If Hollywood had but the courage, he might come to terms with his toppy dom side in a more healthy manner. As it was, projecting desires onto others was as close as some alphas got to analyzing their own sexual needs. 

Jaded as Maverick was at this point in his life, Hollywood’s moment of self-exposure was more sigh-inducing than a reason to hide beneath the sheets. That didn’t make it any less annoying, though. Unfortunately, because he was shitfaced, Maverick forgot to keep his eye rolling imaginary. Catching the slip-up, Hollywood pointed a shaky finger in Maverick’s direction.

“What would _you_ know about it, Mitchell? Like a beta would even get close enough to find out. Am I wrong? They’re into that shit, right?” Hollywood squinted at him from the ottoman.

I’m _not into it, you glue-huffing piece of shit,_ thought Maverick. Alphas. They ruined _everything._

A lot of them thought being alpha, in and of itself, was enough to blow people’s minds in bed—no prowess required. And of course omegas always enjoyed sex with an alpha. It was written into their DNA to love it no matter how lackluster the performance, right? Wrong. Putting a pheromonal cherry on top of an overbaked cake did not make the cake itself any better past the first and only bite including the cherry.

Not like he could explain any of that. So Maverick laughed awkwardly at Hollywood’s aside and sank into the couch—the very couch where he’d gobbled Iceman’s cock last week—to hide behind Goose, like a deer slipping among the trees to avoid being seen by a wolf. 

Maverick looked askance at Iceman once the conversation safely left him behind. As he had been for much of the evening, Ice watched Maverick with an inscrutable expression. Every so often he made eye contact with Slider and some sort of understanding passed between them. Maverick was too drunk to parse it. Everyone here evidently held their liquor a lot better than he did. 

“Man, I wish I could have a peach for real,” Wolfman said. He waved his cowboy hat in the air to accentuate the importance of this desire. “They’re always down for it. I met one in Bali that’d roll over for anybody if you just licked his fuckin’ ear. Not even in heat and they’re all slobbering for cock.”

“You’re so full of shit, ‘Wood,” Slider slurred. He used Iceman’s body as support to lean over in Wolfman’s face. “You’ve never even _seen_ a peach besides Vinn—Mr. Heatherly.”

“Fuck you, I have. You _know_ when you see one. They’re—you know,” Wolfman waggled his hands, forming the outline of his mental image midair. “Different. ”

“The hell’s a peach?” Sundown poked his head into the living room from the kitchen. He’d been in there helping himself to Iceman’s freezer and blender in order to craft alcoholic milkshakes.

“One of _them,_ ” Slider said. No one needed clarification on this. 

“That’s not what it’s called,” Chipper chimed in. He was one of the quieter naval aviators that Maverick hadn’t spoken to yet. 

“Well then what do _you_ call them, smartass?” Slider again. In homage to his callsign, he slid down from the loveseat and collapsed gently onto the floor.

“Bikes.” Sundown cut in. He mimed riding a bike, nearly falling over in the process. “‘Cause, you know, everybody takes ‘em for a ride.” 

“Why get metaphorical? We just called them holes back home. It’s what they’re for. They just lay there and take it. They’re all...you know, delicate. Tender.” Wolfman hugged himself, presumably to emphasize the meaning of the word tender. 

“ _Tender?_ Are you talking about people or meat?” Iceman finally jumped in.

“Fuck, I dunno. They’re all soft. They just let you do whatever.” Wolfman stood up and wandered into the kitchen to join Sundown.

Maverick snorted into his drink. He’d never done it himself due to the risk of the Navy catching on, but some mollies would go off heat blockers as pregame a few days before a party, an act referred to as “baking.” Sometimes baking had little impact on the mollies beyond triggering a normal heat, but on occasion a baked molly experienced intense withdrawal symptoms. 

Maverick could actually assess an attending alpha’s experience level by the amount of distress on their face when a baked molly in full heat acted off the stereotypical molly script; euphoria, wistfulness, and full-on dissociation were taken in stride, but it was the rage that really took the newcomers off guard. 

On one memorable occasion Maverick overheard the following monologue: “You call _that_ a blowjob? I’ve had better from a goddamn cantaloupe with a fucking _hole_ cut in it. Where’d they find you, Aunt Joe’s home for defective alphas?” Maverick had seen at least fifteen alphas leave parties in tears halfway through the night (that one certainly had). Expectations rarely fit the reality. Add that to a cultural-chemical cocktail and you had a recipe for disaster.

“Okay, but what other ones have you heard? I’m all out,” Slider said from the floor.

“Kittens,” Ice said. He began listing others, one for every finger he lifted to count. “Princesses, lookers, loafers, fliers, rags…”

Goose stood up, taking Maverick by the hand and leading him to Iceman’s tiny bathroom. Iceman’s voice got softer and softer until it faded completely away. Inside the bathroom, Maverick stared into the mirror, mesmerized by his own reflection in the way drunk people sometimes were.

“You doing okay, Mav?” Goose patted Maverick’s shoulders and head, as though checking for injury. “Seems like it’s getting a little rowdy out there. Do you want to go home? We can go home. We could go right now if you want.”

“It’s okay,” Maverick slurred. “Everything is okay and good. I feel—it’s so good.”

Goose did not look convinced. “Hmm,” he said. “Are you sure? I have the quilt at my house if you think you need it.”

“I do not need the quilt,” Maverick said with as much solemnity as he could manage. It wasn't much. “Thank you...for...your concern.” He tried to step around Goose to exit the bathroom and fell on the floor halfway there. Goose sighed and rested a hand between Maverick’s shoulders.

“They have no right to be talking like that,” Goose said firmly. “They don’t know what the hell they’re talking about. You’re all _people,_ for god’s sake. Don’t listen to them, Mav.”

“Wanna quilt later,” Maverick muttered. “Wanna go back now.”

“All right, we can do the quilt later. Up and at ‘em.” With great difficulty and magnificent perseverance, Goose helped Maverick into a more vertical position.

Upon their glorious return to the living room, Goose changed the subject from mollies to Flavors of Cake: Best Of. He was _so_ good at distractions. During the transition, Maverick chanced another look around the room. Once again his eyes met Iceman’s and once again Maverick saw him exchange glances with Slider. They both looked absolutely plastered but in a far more dignified way than Maverick could manage. 

Maverick tried not to squirm with excitement: Iceman focused on him with the intensity and precision of a radar lock. He didn’t have to wonder what was on Iceman’s mind at the moment. But soon Goose would notice, and then...?

* * *

And _then_ Slider would pull Goose into the kitchen with the excuse of playing beer pong with Sundown and Wolfman. Which would leave Iceman free to coax Maverick into his bedroom for entertainment of an entirely different variety. The sneaky bastards.

Maverick did not resist this in any way and in fact demonstrated his approval of the kidnapping by clinging to Ice as hard as he could. At long last, Maverick let himself press his face into Iceman’s naked chest—when had their shirts come off?—to snort that sweet, sweet alpha smell. 

Well actually, it was more spicy than anything else. Earthy and strong. Not sweet. Who gave a fuck? He was trashed, Iceman was trashed, and the tiny part of his brain that was not occupied by horny thoughts remembered that he’d have gladly done this stone cold sober.

Ice nibbled at the edge of Maverick’s mouth, coming close but not committing to a kiss just yet. He’d done the same many of the times he’d cornered Maverick in the locker room. The self-imposed rationing seemed to drive Iceman wild—a study in the precision and control he commanded on the ground as well as above it.

“Hard to get you away from your bodyguard, Mav,” he muttered, scraping his teeth down Maverick’s neck.

Maverick bit his lip to keep from moaning. In bed he had a tendency to be rather vocal and he felt self-conscious about it; at nearly every molly party he’d been to, someone had yelled at him to shut up. He tried to concentrate on keeping quiet for Iceman’s sake. 

“Oh, Goose, he—he really watches out for me. He cares a lot. He has a horse quilt and he puts me in it when I’m sad or when I have my—the wiggles. Wiggly feelings. Once a month." Maverick adhered to Iceman, pressing up against him skin-to-skin, heedless of his own words. "They don't go all the way away. I know when...they're here. In me. Like an itch. No smells. Nobody knows but me.” 

Ice looked up from somewhere around Maverick’s navel. Maverick realized he was now laying in the middle of Iceman’s bed, with Iceman kneeling over him. When had _that_ happened? 

“Why is he always so worried about you?” Ice played with the waistband of Maverick’s jeans. “You need somebody holding your hand, Maverick? I’m surprised he doesn’t carry you in his arms to your jet. Bradshaw’s a basket case.”

Instead of taking a swing to defend Goose’s honor, Maverick laughed. To be honest, it was really more of a giggle. Whatever it was, hearing it made Ice snicker in response.

“What’s wrong with holding hands?” Maverick said. “Holding hands is so nice.” He grabbed Ice’s hand and held it. “See? Nice.”

Ice hummed a long, low note. “What I had in mind is a lot more than holding hands, Mitchell. I owe you something. You good for it?”

Oh my god. He was referring to the—that he’d given Ice back when—“Oh. Oh, wow. I don’t—wow. _Yes._ You can do whatever you want to me.” Fuck yes; coming to this party had been Maverick’s best life choice thus far. Up there with selecting all of the above for his ice cream cone flavors.

Iceman’s eyes darkened and he made his way back up Maverick’s body to bestow a kiss at long last, curling his tongue so delicately in Maverick’s mouth that Maverick couldn’t help but to wrap all four limbs around Iceman just so he could keep him there forever. 

After a few minutes of fumbling they both exiled their remaining clothing to the floor, leaving behind the supple slide of skin on skin. Maverick wanted to pull back and just _look_ at him—even though he’d already seen pretty much everything in the locker room—but couldn’t bear to extract Iceman from his arms to do so.

“You drive me crazy, Maverick.”

“Why? Because I have more points than you sometimes?” Maverick patted Ice on the head. He misjudged the angle a bit and accidentally slapped him in the face a few times on the way there. “I’m a good boy. I’ve been flying _so_ good for Goose.”

Ice pressed his cheek into Maverick’s chest, not quite hiding a smile that threatened to take over his whole face.

“You talk like a first grader when you get wasted. Does that always happen or is this a special occasion?” 

“Go fuck yourself, Kazansky.” Maverick giggled again, topping off with a hiccup. “Put a cactus up your dickhole.”

“There he is.” Ice pressed him down. “Lay back on the pillows.”

When Ice finally— _finally—_ put his mouth on Maverick’s cock, Maverick nearly cried with satisfaction. He’d been painfully hard for what felt like forever, and the fact that it was Iceman coming in to save the day made it all the sweeter. A warm, wet tongue slid up and down his length in a lazy, unhurried fashion, occasionally sweeping across the head and under the rim of the glans. My god, it had been _so_ long.

While he worked diligently away, Iceman put his hands everywhere he could reach: he slid them down and around Maverick’s thighs, skated across his belly, thumbed over his nipples. Maverick was torn between closing his eyes to concentrate on the feel of it all and keeping them open so he could remember the sight forever.

“You’re so fucking hot, Maverick. I’ve been waiting too long for this.” Ice rubbed the pad of his thumb around the head.

“Why do you—mmm, _ah_ —want me so bad?” 

“I wish I fucking knew.” Ice’s hands tightened on his thighs, holding Maverick still for ease of movement. “But you’ve been driving me insane from day one.” 

“Mmm...sorry.” 

“Didn’t say it was a bad thing.” Ice pulled away slowly, giving the head a gentle suck and a few soft licks to make things interesting. 

“Oh, good. So good. Fuck—” 

“You smell incredible, Mitchell. Anyone ever told you that?” He set his teeth upon Maverick’s thigh, leaving imprints in the skin.

“Yes. Smell—smell all you want. It’s free of charge—for one night only—oh, fuck...yeah, right there.” He arched his back, undulating gently into Ice’s mouth as much as he could get away with.

It felt...good. Just good. Serviceable, but not amazing. Though Maverick wanted to be charitable, the fact it was _Iceman_ giving the blowjob and the fact that Maverick was drunk as fuck did most of the work in the pleasure category. 

Ice wasn’t bad at giving blowjobs, per se, but he wasn’t an expert either: another casualty of male alpha anxiety about being “too good” at sucking dick or taking one up their ass. Generally, alphas were selfish lovers, and even when they weren’t, their performance wasn’t anything to write home about. 

Iceman, were Maverick handing out letter grades, fell firmly into the C category. Adequate, but not spectacular. In Maverick’s esteemed opinion, Iceman would have to do this several dozen more times to _actually_ pay Maverick back for his blowjobs, all of which had earned an A+. 

Maverick, of course, would never have told Iceman any of this while sober...but because he was drunk as fuck, he did. Fortunately, Ice didn’t have any reaction beyond releasing Maverick’s cock with a wet popping sound so he could glower at Maverick more effectively. 

“What is this, an after action report?”

Maverick smiled beatifically. “That would require some action first, _Mister_ Iceman.”

“You’re a little shit when you’re drunk, Mitchell. So what, is there some beta male sex magic I don’t know about?” He stared at Maverick’s dick suspiciously.

Feigning surprise, Maverick put a hand to his chest. “Oh, are you still here? I figured you’d get your feelings hurt and leave. Alpha males are very _sensitive_ when it comes to sexual performance.”

Ice flushed a deeper red but he didn’t look away from Maverick either. “Well, I didn’t get to where I am today without improving upon my mistakes.”

“All right, then listen.” Maverick propped himself up on his forearms. 

For the next several minutes he slurred through some demonstrations, doing his best to describe the highly technical world of A-level blowjobs through a haze of mead and arousal. Ice paid very close attention to the instructions aside from a petulant comment here and there to make his wounded pride known. 

In no time at all, Maverick coaxed Ice into a more stable position that allowed for the use of both hands: with one he worked the shaft and with the other he rubbed behind Maverick’s balls—“Strokes, Ice. Not pokes.”—the way Maverick had done for him.

“Oh, that’s _much_ better.” Maverick relaxed against the pillows and wallowed in pleasure.

Iceman grunted, focusing entirely on the task at hand. And to his credit, he _was_ taking Maverick’s tips to heart. He’d work his way up to a B- in no time at all.

“If you want to get _really_ advanced,” Maverick said, drunkenly swaying his body back and forth against the pillows, “you can get at the prostate from the inside, too.”

At that comment, Ice pulled away again, staring down at Maverick’s crotch and then up at his face.

“You mean like—?”

“Yeah, inside.”

Ice stared at Maverick’s ass. Maverick gave a long suffering sigh. He answered Iceman’s burning questions: not the ones he’d verbalized, but the ones Maverick knew everyone had.

_“Yes,_ it’s clean. _Yes,_ it feels good. I have—stuff. For it.” He poked Ice in the shoulder. “Shit, man, alpha-on-alpha sex must be the most boring-est sex on the planet. Do you all just sort of hump on each other like dogs until cum flies out? No finesse? No tricks? Sad.”

“Oh, fuck off, Mitchell. I wish I had a ball gag right about now.” But Ice did as he was directed. Slowly—it would have been teasingly had the pace stemmed from enthusiasm and not wariness—Ice trailed a finger near Maverick’s hole. Maverick hummed as Ice pushed in, petting Ice's hair to let him know he was a good boy doing such a good job. 

But when Iceman got the finger all the way in he stopped. And then Maverick felt Iceman’s whole body go stiff.

“What?” Maverick managed to sit up on his elbows. “Why’d you stop? Don’t be a little bitch, man. Everybody’s into this that gives it a chance. Promise.” But Ice was silent, as frozen as his callsign. 

When Maverick mustered enough muscle control to hold his head steady, he could see Ice’s eyes wide open in the dark, staring unblinkingly right into his soul. If he’d been sober, Maverick would have realized with great trepidation the fact that Ice had done nothing to lube up his finger and yet had found no resistance while spelunking Maverick’s ass. 

And Maverick would have _then_ realized that Iceman, when presented with this information, was likely to recall key high school biology lessons on male omegas and come to frightening yet accurate conclusions.

But because he was three sheets to the wind, Maverick would only realize these things after it was much too late.

“What? Whasswrong?” He patted the top of Iceman’s head again.

Silence.

There was a thought—or an idea, or a plea, or _something—_ on the tip of Maverick’s tongue when all of a sudden the bedroom door flew open. Light from the living room down the hall illuminated Goose’s silhouette like a shadow portrait.

Maverick yelped and shoved Iceman out and off of him, scrambling to put his clothes back on even though Goose had seen it all before. But Iceman lounged on the bed where Maverick deposited him, reclining like a goddess of the harvest in a Renaissance painting, careless of his nudity or his obvious erection. 

Well, it _was_ his house. And his bedroom.

“Goose, I’m—”

“Not now, Mav.” Gose moved to stand between Maverick and the bed. Once Maverick got his pants back on, Goose put a hand on his lower back and guided him back to the doorway.

“Come on, Maverick. We’re leaving now.” Maverick could hear the quiver of fear in Goose’s voice. He didn’t know why it was there, only that it made him feel cold and horrified in return. If Goose was afraid, then something very bad was happening.

“Mother Goose,” Iceman called out from the bed. His eyes were closed off, unreadable. “When are you going to let Maverick have some fun? Mav’s a big boy. Let him play with the other kids once in a while.”

Goose took a deep breath, held it, and then let it out slowly. Overt resentment—as caustic as it was uncharacteristic—colored his tone when he responded. “I don’t think you’re the type of person I want Maverick to play with, Mr. Kazansky. Have a good rest of the evening and consider seeking out a therapist for your delusions.”

With that, Goose led Maverick away through the living room, where Maverick accepted some congratulatory ass slaps, and out the front door into the chilly night air blowing in off the Pacific. Even Southern California couldn’t completely escape winter along the coast. 

While they walked, Goose held Maverick’s hand. Usually he didn’t do that for very long, so Maverick was surprised when Goose didn’t let go as they made the journey back to Maverick’s house. By the time they were a quarter of the way there, Maverick had forgotten the events of the bedroom completely.

“Goose. Goose, why are we leaving? I was feeling good. I liked the party. It was good.” Maverick quickened his pace to keep up with Goose’s long legs.

Goose’s grip on his hand tightened. Maverick could feel him trembling through the connection. “That’s the _problem,_ Mav. You can’t keep living your life between your legs like this. It isn’t safe.”

“I know, but it was okay. The Ice Man likes me. He likes me. You’ll see. It’ll be good.” Maverick nodded in agreement with himself.

Goose shook his head. “He just wants to sleep with you a few times before he screws off to his next assignment. That’s what alphas do. They hurt people like you, Mav. It’s not worth it for someone who isn’t going to stick around.”

_“You_ stick around. _You_ don't hurt me.” Excellent points, Maverick thought.

Goose huffed out a dry laugh lacking any real humor. “That's not how it usually goes. And unfortunately for you, this Mother Goose already has a nest.”

“Even if you didn’t, you don’t even think I’m hot.” A beat. “Even though I am. Objectively hot.”

“It pains me to admit it,” Goose said, “but when I look at you what I feel is a powerful urge to put you in a box where no one can ever hurt you. I’d put in a computer or something so you won’t get bored.”

“Wanna play Oregon Trail,” Maverick mumbled. The rest of the party was starting to blur together in his memories. “Wanna die of dysentery.”

“I’ll make it happen.”

They kept walking. It felt like hours. Years, even. Seconds ticked past at geological scale.

“I’m tired. I’m laying down a little.” Maverick sat down.

“Mav, this is the sidewalk. You can’t sleep here.”

“Just a little.” Maverick folded up on the sidewalk and laid his head in the grass.

“Okay, time to go.” Goose reached a hand down and hauled him back up.

“I just laid down.”

“You laid down twenty minutes ago. That’s enough.”

“Nuh uh.”

“Yuh huh. You drank so much you broke time. Come on, let’s get that lube ass home. Do you need the quilt? I can get the quilt. Carole brought that one you like with her. You know, with the ugly horses printed on the fabric.”

Maverick thought about the horse quilt. His mind felt like it was melting, and all that was left behind was clarified love. It was so powerful he felt it might burst him at the seams.

“I love...quilts. I love...you, Goose. I love...airplanes. Flying. So good. Love...those things. Love you.”

“I know, Mav. I know you do. I love you, too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So the way I infantilize Maverick in my diction (dialogue and description both) and imagery (blankie wrapping, anyone?) is intentional as a reflection of the way Goose sees Maverick: someone who is helpless and tender who needs protecting at any cost. Where will that leave Maverick when Goose is gone? He will have to learn to grow on his own terms. 
> 
> I am going to hurt all of you so very deeply next chapter so here is my mental image of Maverick's horse quilt. Which DOES make repeated appearances in the future. Wrap yourself in it and prepare for Pain. Suffering, even.
> 
> I found a bunch of really cool horse quilts while browsing for the perfect Ugly Horse Quilt to establish as my mental image for Maverick's. Like this dope ass one made by LuAnn Kessi, who refers to this as a "rush job??" Girl???:
> 
> Keep looking up horse quilts and don't think about what's going to happen next chapter. Let me know in the comments what internet horse blanket you're picking out to cry in/on.


	7. History cannot be erased

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter Maverick Mitchell does not pull off wearing an entire quilt as an accessory

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It wasn’t Maverick’s house they ended up at. It was Goose’s.

Goose pulled Maverick inside to the living room—the same as all the other living rooms in these cookie cutter plywood shacks—and left for a few minutes. When he came back he’d changed into jeans and a Hawaiian shirt. And he was carrying the horse quilt, which he draped over Maverick like a cathedral veil.

He sat Maverick down on the couch and scooted the ottoman closer so that when he perched on the edge his knees were nearly touching Maverick’s. For a while—Maverick didn’t know how long—Goose stared at the floor. Then he spoke. He sounded tired.

“You know what they’ll do to you if they find out, right?”

Maverick nodded. Even Drunk Maverick knew this conversation by heart. With years of lecture-listening experience, he’d developed the ability to detach his mind from his body just enough to keep the fear from sinking its talons in for good. 

Maverick protected himself from augury by building up another Maverick in his head. _That_ Maverick had already fucked up in some alternative universe. Not him. He would never be caught because they—first Memaw and then Goose—spoke of that Other Maverick, the one who’d been caught. This Maverick—the one _he_ was—would never be caught. 

It was the only way he could cope with the unending cycle of dreadful prophecy. Maverick couldn’t stand thinking about it every day, the reality of what his life would become if he was found out. And so after a while, the “You” in the lectures became that other Maverick entirely: that alternative universe Maverick who The Real Maverick didn’t know and couldn’t communicate with. Armed thusly, the dread Maverick once felt after receiving these scoldings settled into a numb nothingness.

“You’ll get a DD for lying about your status, go to court for buying black market pharmaceuticals, which is a felony,” Goose held a hand out and began numbering the punishments with the fingers on the opposing hand. “Sent to one of those inpatient pheromonal education facilities, get put on probation at best or sent to prison at worst, and you _know_ what people say happens there.” 

Maverick nodded. A couple mollies at parties spoke in strained whispers of the facilities in their home countries, of the many ways a person could destroy without killing and the many ways a person could be hurt and not die. He drew the horse quilt closer around his body. But he didn’t look away from Goose because Goose loved him so very much and didn’t want any of those awful things to happen to him.

“And then, because you were trying to hide, they won’t trust you and you’ll get pressured by the Navy into bonding with an alpha that you probably don’t even know, because they’ll assume you’re not capable of choosing for yourself. And you know, I can’t really talk about all of it, but there are things the Navy’s done in the past to people like you that—well, I just can’t talk about it. The things I’ve heard from my family alone...”

Maverick nodded. He watched Goose stand up to pace circles around the coffee table. Maverick touched his own face to find his cheeks were wet. What had happened to his face? Where had the wetness come from?

“It scares me all the time to think about what might happen to you, Mav. When my brother—” Goose stopped circling. He put his hands on his hips, stared up into the ceiling, and then stared down at the floor.

Maverick nodded. He knew about Goose’s brother. The molly who’d been murdered in Connecticut by his alpha, by the one person who was supposed to protect him from a world that didn’t want him in it. Sometimes Maverick wondered how often Goose saw his brother’s face when he looked at him. How often did Goose see a ghost? Had he ever seen Just Maverick?

“You don’t understand—” Goose’s voice broke. The cushions gently gave way when he collapsed next to Maverick. It was one of those old couches that sorely needed restuffing, the kind that turned into an unintentional love seat when the lack of support meant everyone sitting on it sort of slid into the middle. Maverick sniffed.

Goose stroked Maverick’s hair. “Oh, Mav. No. I’m sorry. Don’t cry. I’m sorry. I was scared. I didn’t mean to scare you, too.” 

Maverick leaned into the touch. Some of the wetness on his face dripped down onto the horse quilt. “I won’t always be around to protect you, Mav. You have to keep yourself safe on your own, too. Come here.”

Once he was in the safety of Goose’s arms Maverick broke down a little. It was interesting, the way that being held made him sad more often than not. Hugs from Goose had a funny way of reminding Maverick of other hugs he might never have.

“I know, Goose. I know. I’m so tired.”

“I know. I’m sorry.” 

“I can’t help but be what I am. I can’t help it.”

“I know.” 

“I’m hurting. Everything hurts. When will it stop?”

“I don’t know, Mav. I wish I did.”

* * *

They hobbled along to the O-Club with Maverick wearing the horse quilt like a poncho. It would have made for a funny picture to look at later, if Goose had his polaroid camera on him. After all the tears dried up, they’d both needed a fresh breeze and a change of scenery. There were too many wistful memories in those cookie cutter houses, even though they’d occupied them for less than a month. 

The bouncer let both of them in with only a cursory look at Maverick’s unusual attire. Vinny awaited them, wiping down the bartop with a washrag. The place was nearly dead, with only one booth occupied by two men whispering furtively to one another. Once Vinny saw who’d come in, he prepared two drinks in silence: a whisky sour for Goose and a water with a paper umbrella in it for Maverick. Goose patted Maverick on the shoulder and then took his drink over to a corner booth, where he slumped over in the seat with a hand over his face.

“Was wondering when you’d be back,” Vinny said. He squeezed the washrag out over the sink and draped it on the edge to dry.

Maverick drank his water. It tasted slightly of lemon. “Why’s that?”

Vinny shrugged. “I’m usually a pit stop for canned peaches. You know, omega boys-in-hiding. For camaraderie and reassurance purposes. You’re not the first one I’ve seen and you won’t be the last.”

An ice-cold hand gripped Maverick by the spine, but it faded away soon enough, chased off by the remaining alcohol in his system. The paper umbrella spiraled around in the glass as Maverick tipped it this way and that, mesmerizing him.

“Am I that obvious?”

“Only to people who are looking and know what signs to look for. _Real_ signs,” Vinny clarified. “Not that “peach radar” shit. Like hey, congratulations, you spotted the peach rolling around naked in a heat. You’re a genuine pheromone Sherlock Holmes, you are.” 

Vinny poured himself something from the tap and came around the bar to sit on the stool next to Maverick. “But you better be more careful, baby. There are people just as observant as I am who don’t have your best interests in mind.”

Maverick pressed the glass to his forehead, relishing in the near painfulness of the cold. “What gave me away? I should probably know. For next time, I guess.”

“It’s that special brand of dead-eyed stare otherwise only seen on death row.” Vinny flicked off some of the foam head onto the rubber mat lining the countertop. “Also, you kept trying to hump that blond asshole’s leg in defiance of all common decency and objective standards for attractiveness. It was a lot even for a bar frequented by pilots, many of whom I find to be emotionally stunted.”

Maverick flushed. Trying not to be too conspicuous about it, he looked over at Goose. Goose was still in the booth with a hand over his face. A third of the whisky sour was gone.

“Well, so what?” Maverick muttered defensively. “He’s good looking. A beta could also want to hump his leg. Probably a lot of them do.”

Vinny raised an eyebrow. This close, Maverick could see the gemstones encrusting Vinny’s nose ring. Probably real, too. How did Jester afford to eat? “Not while giving him those big stupid cow eyes. You looked like a twelve year old girl seeing Michael J. Fox for the first time.”

Maverick was silent for a while. That was how he usually responded to stressful situations. Although his cooped-up frustration tended to manifest in reckless stunts, the really bad stuff—the stuff that kept him up at night—always stole his words away.

“I don’t know what to do,” he said finally. “Everything is so much.”

Vinny hummed in agreement. “Tell me a little about yourself.”

Maverick told him. All things considered, his childhood hadn’t been _bad,_ exactly. His parents and Memaw had loved him. But they’d also instilled in him a constant anxiety about the world. Everyone could be an abuser in disguise.That old man on the bus would turn him in if he knew. That little girl on the playground he wanted to swing with would think he was weird and certainly wouldn’t want to be his friend. That officer will make you suck him off in exchange for keeping your secret. 

The fast-paced intensity of the Navy had been good to him in this regard. Memaw was terrified of him joining the service, sure that he would be found out at once, with so many wandering eyes about. But far from being exposed, the crowded Navy ships were the perfect place to hide. 

People were stuck in close quarters for long periods of time and consequently were more tolerant of odd behavior so long as it didn’t impact them directly. You didn’t want to pick a fight with someone you’d be bunking with for the next several months.

Goose finding out about the pills had been Maverick’s one major slip-up. He was lucky it ended the way it had. Now that Goose had his back, Maverick’s wariness had atrophied some from lack of use; he no longer had to look over his shoulder constantly with Goose keeping a 360-degree watch 24/7. 

“Yeah, I noticed he takes care of you,” Vinny said. “He seems like a good friend, to keep your secret like that. He’s not asking for anything in return, is he?”

Maverick shook his head. “No, no. Goose isn’t like that. I think—” Maverick checked again. Goose hadn’t moved. The whisky sour was now half gone. Maverick lowered his voice to a whisper. “—I think he wants to look out for me because of what happened to his brother.”

“Ahhh,” Vinny said, a look of grave understanding on his face. He took a long pull from his pint. “The old alpha grief trip. Yeah, I had an alpha sniffing around me once who was like that. When they can’t protect someone it gets them all depressed. They’ll start adopting all the feral cats they can find and shit like that just to keep a lid on it.”

“So what should I do?”

Vinny examined a scratch on the bartop with a fingernail. “About what?”

Maverick considered. “Iceman. That alpha from the first night. I really like him. I think he likes me. Couldn’t—” He hesitated. “Couldn’t things work out? Maybe they will and he’ll keep my secret, like Goose. Maybe things could be okay. Can’t they?”

The smile Vinny gave him wasn’t condescending, but it spoke of a lifetime of hellish experiences, each ending only in pain.

“You don’t want to end up like me, hon.”

“Like you?”

“Would you like to hear my superhero origin story?”

* * *

Vinh Heatherly, born Lương Quang Vinh in North Vietnam in 1946, had been a freelance reporter throughout the American War (also known as the Vietnam War, depending on one’s allegiances). In the early days he hadn’t considered himself on any particular side, mainly because he was privileged enough to be apolitical. 

His father, a wealthy international businessman, moved the family south where the capitalists’ money was so as to escape the Communist “troubles” in the north. He treated his male omega son to a lavish lifestyle, denying Vinny few pleasures and sending him to college in France at age sixteen. From Vinny’s perspective, the war might as well have been a family feud, taking place in far-off rice paddies and nameless villages he didn’t care about. 

In Vietnam, Vinny explained, male omegas were well loved, in spite of efforts by French imperialists to bury and criminalize pro-molly traditions. The most common term for mollies in Vietnamese meant something like “paragon” when translated to English. Mollies in Vietnam usually spent their whole lives spoiled by family members. Even people outside the family got in on it, with unrelated neighbors leaving little offerings for the male omega to find: candy, alcohol, books, or whatever they knew he liked.

“I mentioned to someone at the market once that I really missed Coca-Cola and the next day there was a six-pack waiting for me at the door. Had to have cost a fortune because of the trade restrictions. Those were the good days,” Vinny sighed wistfully. 

He got presents, he got an education, he partied with abandon, and he had access to high-quality Indonesian heat blockers that didn’t produce migraines or constipation like the lower quality European-made blockers did at the time.

By 1964, American military presence in the south—mainly in the form of advisors—numbered over 20,000. Vinny was eighteen and bored on summer break, so he wandered into the nearest diplomatic office and offered himself up as a part-time photographer. 

At the time, reporting on the war was considered a safe job by people who had no fucking clue what was just over the horizon. Vinny certainly hadn’t expected things to get as bad as they did. Family connections, socially enabled apathy, and Swiss bank accounts shielded Vinny from the true scale of instability in the South. Several coups occurred that Vinny only knew about by overhearing the servants gossiping. 

But soon things would settle and everyone would return to normal, Vinny thought. Plus, his father had just given him a camera and Vinny was bored with taking photos of street cats and houses (and himself, in the mirror).

It was easy at first. To drum up support for the southern forces, Vinny went to boring meetings and took photographs of officers posed majestically over maps with little markers pinned in them. He moved within exclusive circles like a spectre, his press card and comforting pheromones allowing him access to places others could only speculate existed. 

He was fed well and occasionally had sex with the American advisors who were curious about a male omega living openly and unattached. Vinny was bringing this up, he said, only to make a point about America’s objectifying fascination with male omegas. 

Initially, he’d thought nothing of the Americans’ obsessive attention. Shame certainly didn’t factor in his own feelings. He hadn’t been taught to attach his morals or personal value to sex. Sex was something he did for fun once in a while, just like lots of other people he knew. Eventually, though, he caught on to the _real_ reason for their interest. 

In the freedom of his wealth, youth, and naivety, Vinny at first loved their attention. But once he started noticing the signs of something sinister at play, he couldn’t stop noticing. Something about the way the Americans looked at him spoke of saccharine adoration bordering on slavish: they wanted to devour him like an exotic, foreign fruit. Sometimes they even told him so. At the time, he’d laughed it off and gone about his business.

“Now, of course,” Vinny interjected, “I wish I’d have poked all their eyes out. Uncivilized racist fetishists, all of them. I was a sideshow to those assholes. Do you know what I found out people said about Vietnamese peaches? Do you know some of the shit they asked me to my face? They asked if I had—no, I won’t tell you. You don’t want to know. I wish _I_ didn’t know. Dogs. Just a bunch of dogs.”

For two yawn-inducing months, Vinny shot scenes in relative quiet. Things changed after the Gulf of Tonkin incident: in response to the altercation, President Lyndon B. Johnson sent over 180,000 combat troops. With them came the promise of a drawn-out conflict, strategic and cultural mishaps, long periods of monotony permeated with intense acts of violence, and far more exciting things to photograph.

And Richard Heatherly. Callsign Jester.

“I probably saw him a few times,” Vinny said. He tapped a finger rhythmically on the rim of his pint glass. “I say ‘probably’ because he wasn’t important enough to be introduced to me as an individual, so I have no clue how many times I was around him. Might even have taken a photo of him once or twice; one of the things I did after the American boots clocked in was board aircraft carriers and take photos of approved scenes: handsome mechanics hard at work, pilots lovingly caressing their aircraft, groups of sailors standing at attention. Anything with an American flag waving entrancingly in the wind. You know—emotionally fulfilling fluff for their newspapers back home. The Americans paid me in cash, too. That was my favorite thing about them and honestly their only positive quality as a group.”

Maverick hummed thoughtfully. “So I’m guessing Jester noticed you more than you noticed him.”

“Correct. We’re not quite there yet, though.”

Over the next decade, the situation deteriorated. Vinny kept photographing things, his subjects now much less fun and far more heavy: photos of villages bombed out of existence, photos of children sitting near their dead parents, photos of tired soldiers staring at their boots, photos of farmers mutilated by napalm, photos of the landscape forever altered by chemical warfare. On several occasions Vinny took staged photos of leaders both pre- and post-execution: the first photo for the current government and the second for the successor. 

Years passed, with Vinny marking the days only by the change of the seasons, solemn New Years parties, and an occasional remembrance of his birthday. War, he soon discovered, was tedious in a way he hadn’t expected. Days would pass without incident, and out of the blue would come a bombing raid lasting hours. Then, nothing again for weeks. The spectre of war hung over the whole region like a hungry ghost.

It had been clear to the American advisors as early as 1966 that the war was not winnable, not in any meaningful way. But politics reigned supreme, and America had plenty of young men to draft and money to burn. Still, by 1972, American ground forces were mostly gone, leaving air support and artillery doing most of the heavy lifting. 

Vinny was twenty-six in 1972 and considerably jaded. He kept going to the aircraft carriers for photos, but by this point he documented the war efforts for historic significance rather than for the purpose of propaganda. American public sentiments on the war had long ago quelled the need for sexy mechanics and pensive pilots. 

Vinny refrained from casual trysts with outsiders, tired of their objectifying fascination with him. The brief escapism sex provided was never enough to outweigh the way he felt afterward. If he did sleep with someone, which he still did on occasion, it was almost never with a foreigner. He made an exception exactly one time post-Tonkin, and the person for whom he made that exception happened to be Richard Heatherly.

“He told me it was him later, anyway,” Vinny sighed. “At the point of first contact I didn’t know the guy from Adam. I was on his aircraft carrier—the _USS America_ —wandering around wherever I could get away with and shooting. I ran out of film, went to the mess, and they fed me no questions asked—I swear, the things I got away with—and I sat down right in front of him...I just floated in like a cloud.”

Vinny lightly elbowed Maverick in the ribs, laughing. “That’s how he says it. ‘Like a cloud.’ Imagine that in his voice. Anyway, I ate whatever nastiness they had that day and then he invited me to his bunk for an hour of sexual diversion. And I thought sure, whatever. He was good looking enough, and he wasn’t creepy about the whole thing. I honestly don’t even remember how the sex was. He was nobody to me.”

Vinny moved on, back to shore and back to photographing Saigon as the skyline grew more and more unrecognizable. Jester, according to Vinny’s secondhand account, remained on the carrier, daydreaming about the photographer he’d fallen instantly in love with.

And then everything went all to hell. America withdrew from the war badly, picking up her skirts to avoid collateral damage as she went, leaving the disorganized southern Vietnamese forces to defend themselves in vain. Vinny lost touch with his family (and most of their money) for good. 

Into a duffel bag went Vinny’s camera, a few changes of clothes, what valuables he could locate from the family’s hiding places, and his cat. He managed to hitch a ride on the _USS America_ as it was on its way out of Dodge; a few high ranking officers recognized him and happily let him board. The cat was a huge hit with the sailors, who made her a little hammock out of some scraps. And a cat tree. And a rug.

“I still have a picture of her in her little bed they made, with a duvet and everything,” Vinny said. “Still alive, actually. Twenty-one years old and cranky about it. If we don’t feed her breakfast at exactly six in the morning she _will_ attempt a double homicide. Deaf as shit.”

“But how did you and Jester end up together at the end?”

“Oh, that,” Vinny said. His voice went flat. “So America at the time had made all heat blockers illegal. Even the partial blockers like mine. The ones I got from Indonesia made everything less intense but didn’t completely suppress anything. I liked it that way. But I’m sure you can put two and two together. Me with the clothes on my back and no access to heat blockers on an American ship...even if I’d bribed someone it would’ve been useless unless they had the same ones I’d been using. Not all of the drugs are based on the same molecules, and some can react badly when paired with other blockers still in your system. Actually did my master’s thesis on that.”

Faced with the prospect of withdrawals and a powerful heat—for, as Vinny reminded Maverick, the first few after going off the blockers were awful—Vinny picked out a nice little supply closet and barricaded himself in there with snacks and a roll of toilet paper. He dumped most of the supplies into the hallway, just to be polite. 

It would only be a couple days, Vinny thought. He could do this. It wasn’t as though a legion of horny alphas would break the door down as soon as they smelled him. In Vietnam, things like that didn’t happen. People knew how to control themselves, after all. Pheromonal changes didn’t make someone into an entirely different person or excuse violence. Surely things would be the same on an American ship.

“So I just kept telling myself that while I waited it out. I wasn’t paying too much attention to things. I was scared, alone, and in a lot of pain. I heard a few scuffles outside the door but I didn’t pay too much attention to it. Figured it was unrelated. Did my business in a bucket. Those were not glamorous times for old Vinny. When it was finally over I just felt drained. Scooped out. I put my clothes back on and opened the door smelling like sweat, slick, and misery. And there he was. Richard Simon Heatherly. In the flesh.”

So in America, Vinny parenthesized, things were different for omegas, especially male omegas. The heats made alphas uncontrollable, the Americans said. It was only natural for alphas to behave with selfish violence, to take what they wanted and what the world owed them. And those assumptions encouraged alphas to indulge their every carnal desire, every dark lust, careless of the consequences that wouldn’t come. 

The ones with no compunctions had smelled Vinny and, like ravenous wolves, crept through shadowed hallways to the supply closet. To take, to feed, to drain him dry. But Heatherly had gotten there first. And he’d guarded the door.

“And I just—” Vinny stared into the liquor shelf sightlessly. He was thousands of miles away from the bar, somewhere across the sea. “I thought about everything I’d just been through. I was still reeling from the withdrawals and the residual pheromones so I was already primed to be impressionable, but I remember him holding my hands and just...looking at me like I was a god incarnate—You know, it’s so weird.” Vinny muffled a laugh behind his hand. 

“I think of the silliest things when I’m on the edge like that. He was just—” Vinny held his hands out, gesturing to an invisible Jester behind the bar. “He was just _standing_ there and telling me he loved me and he wanted me to live with him in America...and all I could think was, ‘Hey man, you better wash your hands before touching your face. I just shat in a bucket for two straight days with no soap and you’re gonna get pink eye if you don’t wash that off.’ Like _that_ was anybody’s main concern. He didn’t get pink eye, though, so I guess it turned out alright in the end.”

Vinny exhaled. He finished off his beer. Fondness and ennui warred for supremacy in his expression. “What were my options, really? Looking back, I could’ve made in on my own. It would’ve been tough, but I could’ve done it. But right then I was just so scared and desperate. I went back to his bunk with him—showered first, thank god—and he didn’t even want to fuck me. He just let me live there with him and he watched my back. Real low bar for propriety, right? Imagine being in a situation so shitty that you feel grateful that you’re not being assaulted.” Vinny rolled his eyes. 

“And you know...by then I was starting to get some kind of idea what life would be like for me when we got back to wherever the hell we were going. Pearl Harbor? Fuck, I didn’t know. But from what I’d heard people say, life was gonna be uphill both ways no matter what. The fact that I had a degree in chemistry from École Normale Supérieure meant shit-all. A refugee _and_ a male omega? Just shoot me in the head; it’ll be faster, right?”

Goose coughed. Again Maverick looked back to check on him. The whisky sour was gone.

“And like I said, I probably could have made some kind of life for myself. It’s not like it’s illegal to be omega, male, and single. But I’d just finished with one war and didn’t want to start another. Ricky had a job, status, medals and shit. And I had my clothes, assorted valuables--some of which were stolen by customs, a camera, and a cat.”

“Ricky,” Vinny went on, waving a hand dismissively, “he wanted to do this whole _romantic_ thing. He loves that shit. Still! With the wooing and the dating and everything. I just wanted to get things over with. I’d already decided by then I didn’t feel like roughing it alone. Why _not_ throw in with him? He’d been polite and well-behaved, and he’d posted up outside the supply closet to beat the shit out of any alphas who’d got it into their heads they were entitled to some of my sweet ass. He was poor as shit but I don’t care about things like that. Signed a bonding contract with him all official in front of the chaplain right there on the damn boat before he could change his mind. The whole boat was foaming at the mouth congratulating him on bagging a foreign party favor.”

“And?”

Vinny shrugged. “And he was good to me. Kept waiting for him to turn into some roided up psycho like I’d heard American alpha boys all were. He never did. He provided for me, bought me a _very_ nice new camera—like, this-is-rent-for-the-month nice. Wasn’t the same, though. Just felt lost all the time. Everything was unfamiliar, and on top of dealing with peach prejudice I also had to deal with being Vietnamese in America after the Vietnam War. I wanted to try freelancing for a paper, and Ricky encouraged me to give it a try...everybody turned me down. Didn’t give a shit about what I’d done in the war. Didn’t care about my international awards _or_ my degree.” 

“But what else would you expect from a country that had things like Heat Allowance laws on the books? Alphas still get out of assault charges with barely a hand slapping if they can prove their victim was omega and in a heat.” Vinny pitched his voice low in imitation of, Maverick assumed, a Californian newspaper editor with too many uninformed opinions. “‘Won’t you be too distracted by your heats to shoot straight?’” 

“People always say shit like that with this _fucking_ look on their faces, too.” Vinny rapped his knuckles restlessly against the counter. “I felt like somebody’s pet that got loose. Still feel like a pet some days. Christ. But you know what, though? I got a master’s in chemistry from Stanford. I had to turn in a signed letter from Ricky to be allowed to, because _that’s_ a thing, but I fucking got the damn piece of paper. God, the things I put up with here. I do not envy you, baby.”

Maverick bit his lip, breaking the tender skin that gave way easily due to frequent self-abuse. He didn’t know what to make about Vinny’s story. Should he be worried? Assured? 

It sounded like Jester was an okay alpha, since Vinny had stuck around. But what would Iceman be like, if they were together? Would he support anything Maverick wanted to do or dream of? Or would he change, becoming overprotective and controlling, not wanting him to work or leave the house? He hadn’t even known Ice for that long. Anyone could put on a persona for a few weeks. Did Maverick even know the real Iceman?

“Is he nice to you still?” Maverick sorely wished for a beer label to pick at. He had to make do with his own fingernails. “I’ve heard stories about how some of us get treated. And he’s such a hardass in class. I don’t think I’ve seen him smile once. Is he bad to you?”

Vinny gave him a crooked smile. “Nah, he’s not bad. That’s just his work face. He’s a lot more relaxed at home. He’s not chatty. But he forgives easily. Loves spending his paycheck on me. Adept at horizontal hugs. By now he’s an expert about helping me manage my heat. I’m on the recently-legalized partial blockers, shitty though they are, but Ricky was there for the absolute mess that was my unregulated episodes back when we first started out.” 

“The cage is gilded, friend.” Vinny swept his arms out, gesturing to the bar at large. Maybe the whole world, too. “But I’m bitter and disillusioned and when I’m drunk I take it out on him and he lets me. It hurts: all the weight of my memories and the things I wanted when I was a kid compared to where I am now. I yell and throw pillows at him and say things I don’t mean. It’s like you said: everything is _so_ much. 

“Took an act of fucking god to get someone to sell me this bar.” Vinny pounded a fist on the bartop. “Took an advanced act of fucking god to get people to come in. I dunno if they thought they were gonna catch the peach from me through proximity or what. Fuck ‘em. They might jerk off to fantasies of me sucking their dicks and calling them daddy but _I’m_ the one going home with their hard-earned cash at the end of the night.”

Maverick contemplated his water. “I just want—when I was little I used to read these books, and—”

Vinny put a hand on Maverick’s shoulder. Two eyes like hearthfires warmed the alcoves of Maverick’s heart. Vinny was sad but honest. Like Goose, he wanted to help.

“Look out for yourself, all right? Those pretty boys in the history books ain’t you, and they ain’t gonna be you, baby. This isn’t the Mongol Empire; nobody thinks peaches have what it takes to go to battle. You’d get discharged before you could even blink. Your friend’s right. Keep your head down. It’ll be okay...better, maybe...one day.” 

Maverick nodded. He finished his water, accepted a hug from Vinny, wrapped the horse quilt more firmly around himself and went to collect Goose. Words escaped them both on the way home. In Maverick’s bedroom, Goose hugged him too, telling Maverick one more time how sorry he was for letting his anxiety get in the way of Maverick’s fun.

“I wish you were safer, Mav. I wish the world was safer. The world is a good place with you in it. Mr. Heatherly is right. Everything will be okay one day.”

He let Maverick hang on to the horse quilt. For now, Goose said.

* * *

Iceman acted strange in class the following Monday. And the day after that. And the day after that. He wasn’t ignoring Maverick, not really, but something cagey and nervous had replaced the spark of _want_ that had been in his eyes before. It was baffling to see such hesitation on Iceman’s face.

He didn’t corner Maverick in the locker room anymore. No matter how long Maverick waited or how carefully he schemed, Iceman avoided any rooms with Maverick in them unless he couldn’t help it. And no matter how quickly Maverick showered, he was never quick enough to catch up to Iceman after.

It had to be something that happened at the party. They hadn’t interacted between then and now, so what else could it be? Maverick wished he knew what he’d done, but everything at the party sloshed around swamp-like in his memories. Wading through the sludge produced only more sludge. 

Nevertheless, he reminisced by force. He’d been drunk, listening to stupid alphas talk about stupid alpha bullshit. And he’d felt really good and buzzed, and he’d been in Iceman’s bedroom...but he had no idea what occurred after entering the bedroom. Everything was fuzz until his faculties returned later in Goose’s house. He remembered everything at the O-Club and going to bed for certain. 

But Iceman was avoiding him, so _something_ had happened. It had to be the party, right? Something at the party _had_ to have set Iceman off. But Iceman wasn’t mad at him—he didn’t smell mad, anyway—so what was it? Maverick tried to get answers directly from the source, but Ice was too clever to be caught.

Iceman moved around him like a ghost, unresponsive and nearly intangible. There were no burning looks, no secret kisses. Goose thought it was about damn time. Maverick felt a little more of his heart crumble away, a fitting punishment for the audacity to hope. 

After a while Maverick started moving around like a ghost, too, living in his favorite fantasies and what-ifs as Iceman drifted further and further away, both of them riding inescapable currents of fate: two separate tributaries destined to meet head-on at the river up ahead.

* * *

Maverick is flying. 

And then he is not. 

A sound like a grating scream comes from around the tail and his jet begins spinning wildly out of control, pinning him to the side of the cockpit. He can hear Ice in his ear yelling about a rudder malfunction, a breakup, a catastrophe of epic proportions. 

The jet starts shuddering like it’s going to shatter apart. He can’t reach the lever. Neither can Goose. A force like an invisible boulder keeps them locked in place. 

Helpless. Drowning. Trapped.

A sharp bang, and the terrible lung-rending tear of the thin, high-altitude air. 

Wet. Salt. Cold.

A voice in his ear, unfiltered by radio, crystal clear, promising him everything will be fine. If he just hangs on, everything will be fine. Someone will come to get us, Mav, I promise.

Everything will be fine.

And then there’s nothing. 

And then there’s nothing.

Nothing at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...
> 
> i sorry


	8. Death, indefinitely postponed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter Maverick Mitchell does not complete his road trip.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW for medical examination. Nothing explicit because he sort of blocks the whole thing out, but it’s mentioned as having happened.

Maverick woke up in the base hospital, his whole body one giant ache. Though the realization of what must have happened came to him immediately, he didn’t feel afraid. His mind felt floaty, separated from the horror of physical entrapment and free to make mundane observations. 

It was hot and sticky in here, he observed. Someone ought to open a window. The ceiling above where he lay was dirty. How long had it been since someone last cleaned it? Did people clean their ceilings? Lifting his head up, Maverick looked around. Viper was in here, too, sitting hunched over in a ratty old folding chair with his elbows on his knees and a weary look on his face. He made eye contact in name only with Maverick: there was no life in Viper’s gaze save for an unbearable sympathy.

In that moment, reality hit Maverick like a ton of bricks, slamming awareness back into his body so fast he felt emotional whiplash. Viper knew. He knew what Maverick was, and that he’d been hiding it. And that meant other people knew, who would, with certainty, do something about it. They probably already had done things, while he was sleeping. Was there a government agent posted just outside the door, ready to haul him away once he stabilized?

“You know,” Maverick said. Just to confirm. Just in case the worst hadn’t happened.

Viper just nodded.

Maverick didn’t want to ask how. A cursory physical exam with no opportunity ahead of time to hide the subtle signs would have given him away immediately. He felt a strange sort of calm settle over his body. Because it was over, wasn’t it? The constant stress he’d carried for years was founded upon secrets. Now that the secrets had been exposed, there was nothing left to carry. Except—

“Goose? Is he—?”

There was a moment, a fleeting fraction of a second, between the end of Maverick’s question and the beginning of Viper’s response. In that moment, Goose was everything. Alive, dead, somewhere in between. He was indefinitely present, checking his watch at the train station of existence, waiting to see which train came to pick him up.

“He didn’t make it, son.” An entire life, erased in five simple words.

A great and terrible emptiness dug into Maverick’s heart, carving vast caverns into his flesh and blood. It didn’t hurt to learn what he already knew the moment he opened his eyes. The hurt had been there for a long time. It needed only to awaken, and upon waking it set to work tearing down all the nice little things Maverick and Goose had built together. 

Where once feelings lived, now there was nothing, stretching forever all the way to the horizon. He would not rebuild. Maverick would not allow anything else so beautifully naive as love to live there ever again. A few desperate hopes struggled to break free and fly away from the disaster but were quickly dragged back down.

“Oh. How long—?”

“You were out for six days. The session will be over in another week.” 

“Oh.”

Finished. Done. So there it was, then. Another session over. A life snuffed out. An  _ entire life, _ encapsulated in brutal efficiency. But Maverick didn’t feel sad, just empty. The emptiness was sort of nice, actually. He’d wondered, sometimes, how he’d feel if Goose might die before him. A little morbid for a daydream, perhaps, but theirs was a dangerous occupation, and things happened. Anger, he’d thought. He would feel anger and a deep, cutting sorrow. 

Now that it’d happened? He didn’t feel anything but a pleasantly numb floating sensation, as though his consciousness wasn’t particularly concerned about attaching itself to his body. It was like an ice cream scoop had reached down and taken out his entire brain except for the parts needed to breathe and move. Unnatural peace settled on him like a warm blanket.

“In wintertime, the Pacific gets cold, even off the coast of California,” Viper went on. “When you landed in the water you were unconscious. If he’d have stayed where he was and gotten in his raft he’d have made it. But he swam to you and kept you warm and held your head out of the water. After you two were picked up he succumbed to his hypothermia and slipped into a coma overnight. His widow gave us permission to cease—well. I’m sorry.”

“Oh.” A very small piece of his brain fell off of the scoop and back inside Maverick’s head. Just enough to make him worry about himself. The grief for Goose he’d save for later when he was alone and safe; he packaged it away in the back of his mind and told it to wait its turn. “What’s going to happen to me?”

Emotions passed over Viper’s face, too quick and subtle for Maverick to interpret them in his groggy state. Everything seemed so far away and far too close. Some things in the room blurred while others were so sharp he couldn’t stand looking at them.

“This is the situation.” Viper looked down at the floor between his feet. “I want to tell you first and foremost that you have options. I’ve seen to it that there won’t be any arrests. There are rules that can be bent and there are rules that can’t. What I’m trying to do now is work on a way to keep your active duty status. Maybe find you something to do in the meantime while the investigation is underway.”

“Investigation?” A little piece of dread burned a hole through the numbness and set about consuming everything in sight.

Viper waved a hand in the air, like he was swatting a fly. “They want to know how you were able to hide it for so well and for how long. They’ve been interviewing people—students, instructors, office staff, your former shipmates—going through your house. It’s not good, but...”

The cadence of muffled sounds meant Viper was still talking, but Maverick wasn’t listening to the words anymore. Everything Viper said sunk into the mire of painkillers undaunted by Maverick’s oldest and deepest fear. He tried to sit up and found it an impossible task.

A swift movement caught his attention from the door behind Viper’s chair. As he glanced over, Maverick saw someone’s face peeking inside the room through the glazing; the face quickly retreated as soon as he made eye contact, leaving behind the echo of footsteps as its owner beat a retreat. 

Wolfman.

_ Shit. _

* * *

“Take off your clothes and sit on the edge. We need to do a thorough examination.”

The doctors stood there frowning at him, cold as stone and just as unmoving. A gaggle of medical students stood behind, nervously clinging to their clipboards.

“Are you going to leave so I can change?” 

“We don’t have time for that. Take your clothes off and get up on the table there.” 

“Okay.”

Maverick didn’t remember much of the exam. He had his eyes closed for most of it. After it was all over he turned up the knob in the shower to as hot as it would go, scrubbing his body repeatedly until he’d nearly rubbed himself raw. His hands were shaking too much to dry off so he slid back under the covers naked, letting the sheets wick the remaining moisture away.

* * *

Iceman tried to visit him the evening after the exam. Maverick knew he’d come because one of the nurses told him, asking if he wanted her to show Iceman in. Surprisingly, his refusal was honored. After that, there were no more attempts at visitation. By Iceman or anyone else. Maverick spent all day in bed, plotting to keep his panic at bay. 

* * *

Diligent though they were, the staff at the hospital couldn’t watch Maverick  _ all  _ the time. He spent a couple days observing the ebb and flow of doctors and nurses, taking note of patterns and who was where and when. 

Three days after he woke up, when the last IV drip had been removed, he got out of bed, put on the fresh uniform Viper brought for him, and slipped quietly out the window just as the night staff was going on shift.

It wasn’t difficult to walk across the base, back to the housing units. Maverick had spent a lifetime looking like he belonged where he didn’t and this was no different. Most people assumed the best of him for their own biased reasons, and Maverick took advantage of that now as he always had before. 

He didn’t need his keys to get in his house due to a bad habit of forgetting to latch windows. With a dry creak, the window to his bedroom lifted enough for Maverick to climb in. Viper had been right about his house having been searched: it didn’t look like a burgling attempt—his things hadn’t been ripped out of drawers and strewn about the floor—but it was clear someone or someones had been inside. 

The heat blockers he’d left in the bathroom cabinet— _ stupid, stupid _ —were gone, of course. They’d even gotten the ones he’d put under the mattress just in case. Probably they took a dog through or something.

Maverick stood in his bedroom for a couple minutes, thinking. He wouldn’t have much time left before someone arrived wanting to know where he’d gone. For all he knew his name was already on some government black list. A quick check in the top dresser drawer confirmed his passport had been taken—and wasn’t  _ that _ terrifying—which left only his motorcycle as a getaway vehicle. 

They hadn’t found his keys, which he’d put under the sink inside a plastic grocery bag. It had been where Memaw always put her car keys “just in case.” Maverick hadn’t the slightest idea what “just in case” meant as a child, but he was sure glad for her eccentricities now. He returned to the bedroom, keys in hand, and searched his closet. Shucking off his uniform, he changed into jeans, a white t-shirt, his dad’s jacket, and his ratty old cowboy boots.

No. Too recognizable. He threw the jacket off onto the bed and pulled a sweatshirt over his head. It was boring, gray, and one size too big. Better.

According to the clock it was almost half past five in the evening. If he lingered much longer he was bound to get caught before he even had a chance to get away. Without bothering to lock the front door behind him, Maverick left the house and sped away on his motorcycle, never looking back.

* * *

With the setting sun to his left, Maverick rode hard to the north, unsure of his destination. Belatedly he realized the cash in his wallet was the only money he had on him; he did have an ATM card, but would the Navy have arranged for his accounts to be frozen? 

Could they do that? Were they working with the police? The FBI? Who was responsible for enforcing pheromone typing laws and...drug trafficking? Was he a drug trafficker?

The farther away Maverick got from Miramar and TOPGUN, the more helpless he felt. Running away somehow felt more terrifying to him than staying put to see what happened next. If he stayed, his fate was in someone else’s hands. If he left, whatever happened to him, positive or negative, would arise solely from his own choices. Before, he’d had Goose to protect him from his own silliness. And now...

When Maverick finally ran out of gas on a lonely stretch of coastal highway, a tiny part of him felt relieved even as the rest of him screamed to toss the bike in the ocean and start running. He hadn’t run his bike dry on purpose; he’d just been too keyed-up to pay attention to the gauge. It was something he had a tendency to overlook because fuel checks were...Goose had always been the one to…

Maverick pulled off the road to a beach dune. He gently laid his bike down at the base of the dune and climbed up the rest of the way on foot, hugging himself in an attempt to keep out the chill of the night air. Had Goose done that for him, in the unfeeling chill of the Pacific? Had he held his arms around Maverick’s torso to keep safe the precious warmth within? 

On top of the dune, Maverick sat down, legs crossed like a kindergartener at morning meeting. He stared out into the ocean, unseeing. The sun had already set, but there was still a glow on the horizon, barely illuminating the infinite line where water met sky. It looked peaceful out there, beyond the line where the waves started. He wished he had the strength to walk into the sea and never come out again, Goose’s sacrifice be damned. 

Maverick wished a lot of things right now, actually. He wished he was never born. He wished he had someplace to go and that he wasn’t so helpless. He wished that he’d learned to live in the wilderness so he could disappear in the great American West never to be found again. He wished he’d turned down the offer to go to TOPGUN. He wished he’d never enlisted. 

Who would help him now? Even Memaw couldn’t save him; she’d been dead for a year now, and even if she wasn’t, her house would be the first place they’d look for him. 

Going abroad was out of the question. True, he could probably get to  _ some _ where without a passport. He was a fighter pilot into which the Navy had sunk tens of thousands of dollars of training. Troublesome though he was, Maverick knew he was valuable. Someone, somewhere would give him a job. But who’d take him that wouldn’t extradite him back to the United States? North Korea? Somalia? The Principality of Sealand? 

If he went elsewhere, then he’d be hunted down for the drugs thing, the impersonation thing,  _ and _ the desertion thing. And he had no idea what day-to-day life was like for male omegas in most other countries beyond things he’d heard at the parties. For all he knew, everywhere else was worse. At least here the danger was familiar and navigable. 

Headlights from a passing car slowed to a stop on the road behind the dune. Maverick didn’t move, the unnatural calm settling on him now as it had before. Cautiously, the car pulled off the road and came to a stop on a flat area of the sand.

When Viper climbed up the dune and joined him at the top, Maverick didn’t move or speak. 

Why should he? There was nothing to say.

“Are you hurt?”

Maverick shook his head. He didn’t look up at Viper. He didn’t want to look at anyone ever again.

Viper gave a longsuffering sigh. “Son, I’m not trying to kick a man while he’s down, but this might be the stupidest thing you’ve ever done in your entire life.”

Maverick nodded. Viper waited, possibly for a verbal reply, and when none came he sank down onto the sand next to Maverick. After a few minutes he began to speak.

“I knew your dad, you know. We flew in Vietnam in the same squadron based out of the  _ Oriskany. _ He was a real heroic son of a bitch. You remind me a lot of him, actually.”

Now Maverick did look at Viper. But Viper was staring off into the sea, lost in his own memories.

“He had that same unpredictable thirst for danger you do. He’d play by the rules, color within the lines, then out of nowhere he’d do the most ridiculous shit imaginable. And afterward he’d just sink into the floor and refuse to talk about it. Never could quite understand him. We weren’t the closest of friends, but we talked. He told me about you. Talked a lot about you, actually.”

A harsh, biting wind blew in across the water, flattening the dune grass and prompting Maverick to hug himself even tighter. An image materialized in his mind of the horse quilt he’d left behind on his bed.

“He, uh—” Viper hesitated. 

Maverick blinked in surprise; he hadn’t known the old man for long, but he gave off an unfaltering air, in a jet and on the ground. For a man like Viper to stutter over his words, whatever he wanted to say had to be serious.

“He...told me about you. I—now, I need you to understand that what I’m about to tell you could end my career. Both our careers. I’m putting my faith in you, Mitchell. Do you understand?”

A few of Maverick’s words returned. Enough to say, “I do.”

“It was right before we were about to hit a target in eastern Laos. We’d lost a lot of pilots in that area and we knew it was going to be rough. Your dad had been looking a little off for days, so I decided to find him after preflight when we were suiting up. Just to check up on him, see if he was good to fly. And I—he smelled...different. And you know, we sometimes had local visitors of a certain type offering services of a specific nature. I wrote it off as some male omega hooker’s smell still on him.”

At long last, the tears began to arrive, first as a sting behind his eyes and then as a hot trail drawing lines on his face. The unfeeling numbness he’d depended on to get himself here leached away, exposing the unprotected rawness hiding underneath. 

Maverick took a deep breath and held it. Just because his life was falling apart didn’t mean he wanted to start bawling in front of Viper. Surely he had  _ some _ dignity left.

“But right before we strapped in, he took me aside on deck and told me everything. Told me how he’d hid himself for years, how he’d run out of blockers a few days before, how he wasn’t going down without a fight. And he told me about you. Wanted me to look out for you if we ever crossed paths. I said I would.”

Maverick pulled his legs up to his chest, pressing his face into his knees so he wouldn’t have to look at Viper. If there was pity on his face, Maverick didn’t want to see it. 

“We found ourselves in the worst dogfight I’d ever seen. Hostiles everywhere you looked; the sky was lit up like a Christmas tree. But your dad...I’d never seen anything like it. He tore through them like it was nothing, no hesitation, just hit after hit.” Viper’s hands moved erratically through the air, the imaginary jets locked in a high speed battle at the whims of his fingertips. 

“We would’ve all made it out if they hadn’t sent another ten goddamn jets as backup. We figured the whole thing was some sort of ambush. It looked like curtains for all of us; we’d lost two and everyone but your dad had taken damage. Then your dad told us to go, that he’d cover while we got home. I didn’t see him go down. But I was told he’d taken seven of the ten out before they finally got him.”

Somewhere offshore, a seabird called, discordant and low. Far away down the coast, another bird answered. Maverick peeled his face off of the denim and rested his chin on his knees instead, letting the salty air chill the wetness on his cheeks. He felt exhausted, like he’d run all the way out here on foot. 

A revelation that should have been earth-shattering, life-changing, milled around in Maverick’s head holding no more weight than a grocery list. His father, another molly? Had Goose known? Did Iceman know? How many people were puttering around this earth in casual possession of knowledge that would once have changed Maverick’s entire outlook on life?

Viper still sat next to him, patient. Waiting. Ten minutes passed, and then twenty. At last, Maverick spoke.

“What’s going to happen to me? I don’t—Goose said there were facilities, and that sometimes people like me are pressured to—to get bonded right away.”

Viper pressed his lips together until they disappeared into his mouth entirely. 

“Well,” he said finally. “There’s no way to be delicate about this, but I’ve spent most of the evening leveraging your dad’s shit reputation to get you out of trouble. According to official reports he died because he was where he wasn’t supposed to be, across some imaginary line drawn in the sand. They—that is to say, the Navy and the United States Department of Defense—don’t want anyone to find out about his...problem. When you ran, I was contacted by the same department that investigated him and they told me about your dad’s status. Of course, I had to pretend it was the first time I’d heard.”

“What did they say?”

“Not much that’d be of interest to you. They had questions. I managed to convince them it was likely your dad had pressured you into taking the medication from a young age and that you’d never been told what you were, only that the medication you were taking was lifesaving and illegal. For whatever their reasons, they’ve chosen to accept that excuse. I have my suspicions about why they’d be so eager to drop things, but...well, speculation won’t be of use to anyone now.”

Maverick sniffed. Like a child, he used the cuffs of his sweatshirt to wipe his face off.

“And the facilities? And the—?”

Viper finally made contact with him, a soft hand on Maverick’s back holding him steady.

“There won’t be any facilities. The Navy wants this handled quietly. There will be some mandatory counseling I’m sure, but no facilities. As for the other thing...you were already breaking the law, but you spooked them when you tried to run. They want you close. I’ll tell you right now, you’ll get a hell of a lot less heat if you find yourself an alpha and sign a bonding contract.”

Maverick felt like he’d hit his head: dazed, confused, and more than a little punch drunk. Despite his best efforts, he couldn’t lasso his mind back into working order enough to comprehend what Viper was telling him. Everything still felt like a dream in spite of the sadness that had managed to return.

“Who would I—but—an alpha? Any alpha?”

Viper gestured over his shoulder to the car, which was still running with its headlights illuminating them both.

“Bonding with an alpha would elevate your status in their eyes. It’s being spun as a suggestion, but I hope you know better than that. I won’t pretend like I understand the logic behind it. Didn’t go to college for sociology. Anyhow, I have a binder with me of available alphas in the Navy who are open to bonding with a male omega. It’s what the Navy would prefer. Keeping things inside, I mean. 

“And of course, for your sake, keeping it in the Navy would be more familiar to you. They’d be more likely to let you keep your active duty status and benefits, though you almost certainly won’t be allowed to fly, combat or no combat. Don’t get your hopes up, but I’m still looking into that one on principle. You’re welcome in class if you want to finish out this last week. You do have enough points to graduate, even if it won’t come to anything.”

“I...thank you, sir. I know you’re trying to help.” Emotions ebbed and flowed across Maverick’s skin like the tide, as uncontrollable as they were powerful. When they crept up Maverick felt overwhelmed, like he was drowning. And when they pulled away he felt empty and dried up again.

“Thank you for letting me help you, Peter. Now come on, let’s get you home. I brought some gas with us just in case you’d need it. Follow me back to base and I’ll give you the binder and some time to think.” 

* * *

Once the saddest little caravan in the world turned onto Maverick’s street, he thought for a minute about killing the engine on his bike and walking it the rest of the way home to avoid drawing attention to his plight. It was well after midnight by this point on a Friday, and whoever wasn’t at a bar somewhere was at home here, knowing what he was, no doubt disgusted with him already. Letting them know he’d run and that his handlers had collected him felt like one more disgrace he didn’t want to bear.

But what was the point in grasping for respectability now? What happened happened. What would be would be. Why attempt to exert control over his life when it was practically a given that someone else would override what he wanted? At least if he pretended not to give a shit he was on the way to actually not giving a shit. It was far more painful to care and then have his hopes destroyed. He left the motor on.

After opening the garage door he put his bike away and then turned to face the car. The driver hadn’t killed the headlights, and so they illuminated Maverick’s silhouette, pinning the shape of his body into jagged lines on the garage wall behind him. Viper got out of the passenger side and walked towards Maverick, nodding graciously when Maverick opened the door to let him in first. 

The kitchen table seemed as good a place as any to find out how royally fucked he was, so Maverick took a seat. Viper did the same, producing the aforementioned binder and holding it out to Maverick. A cursory flip through the pages revealed a series of plastic sleeve inserts, each one containing two profiles back to back: these were the alphas who would be open to bonding with him.

_ “If _ they accept your request,” Viper elaborated. “It’s your choice, but they have the right to refuse for any reason. This isn’t a sentencing for you or for the person you select. You maintain all civil and human rights afforded to any other male omega living in this country.”

So, he  _ was _ fucked, but only relative to the comforts he’d known in his former life.

“This is a big decision for you to make,” Viper said. “Take your time and don’t rush it. I encourage you to look through the entire selection. All the way to the end.” He stood up. Maverick remained seated and mum; Viper did not address this moment of improper military decorum.

“Let me know if you need any help, Mitchell. You know where I live.”

The binder, thick and intimidating, taunted him from the center of the table.

“I will. Thank you.”

* * *

Maverick mixed himself a mint julep (sans mint, so really just bourbon, sugar, and ice) and sat at the kitchen table, looking through every page all night and into the morning. Each entry displayed a photograph, a paragraph of biographical information including a service history, and sometimes a blurb written by the alpha detailing their expectations and preferences where male omegas were concerned. Most entries had a lot in common with one another. Age and gender especially.

Specifically: old men. There were a  _ lot _ of older men. There was a pattern here and Maverick could only infer as to why; three quarters of the way through the binder he hadn’t come across someone who  _ wasn’t _ a stern old man O-5 or above. 

To make matters worse, most of the men were already legally married, mostly to female omegas, because of course they were; having a female omega for a wife would further elevate their already-high status. It was all some unwritten ranking system based on the sliding scale of desirability everyone pretended didn’t exist. 

Married alphas were allowed to sign bonding contracts with male omegas—because male alphas didn’t marry, they  _ bonded— _ due to the low status afforded to Maverick’s kind. He was biologically pointless and a drain on the resources of anyone pairing up with him. Therefore, people reasoned, it made more sense to encourage people to take up male omegas in addition to a “real” marriage. It would actually  _ improve _ the male omega’s health, safety, and welfare, according to “experts.”

Having multiple legal partners only went so far, even for an alpha—an alpha or beta could only bond to a single male omega, so there were no molly harems outside of porn...legally—but the mere fact that Maverick was considered a burden by default did not bode well for his future options. The alphas that did include editorials on their preferences had no qualms about listing restrictions they intended to impose or behaviors they expected to see. 

Some of the things they said were downright disturbing: he would be expected to participate in group sex with the alpha and his  _ real _ spouse, he would be expected to provide sex on demand with no whining, he was expected to practice one-way monogamy, he was expected to submit himself to weekly sexual promiscuity checks, and so on. One individual felt absolutely no shame in stating he expected his molly to wear a chastity belt out of the home. It was like reading a catalog on kinks. 

Other demands were no less disturbing but at least didn’t involve policing his genitalia: no jobs outside the home, deference and obedience at all times, no driving, attendance at formal Naval events, eat this not that, wear this not that, and so on. It was humiliating just to  _ read _ them.

As Viper had commanded, Maverick read the entire binder. Towards the end of it, he was ready to give up, cry, and pull out a random profile with his eyes closed. But when he read the last page, he was glad he’d done so: this final entry was sparse, its light weight reflecting the subject’s younger age and shorter career. 

Interestingly, it looked to have been added to the binder quite recently. The paper was fresh, bright white with crisp edges unbothered by time. He fished the paper out of the plastic sleeve and left it in the middle of the table. And then Maverick stood up, put his glass in the sink, and went to bed. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spoiler Alert: it’s fucking Viper.  
> Spoiler Spoiler Alert: no it’s not.
> 
> Thank you for the lovely comments! Reader response fuels my will to go on existing. So does spite, but that’s neither here nor there. If your brain is empty, please feel free to respond to one of the following very serious prompts:
> 
> 1\. Please describe in detail how I have hurt you personally. What is the viscosity of your tears?  
> 2\. Do we all need a little horse quilt in our lives?  
> 3\. Is Iceman the Hufflepuff prep to Maverick’s Ebony Dark’ness Dementia Raven Way? Please advise.


End file.
